6 ms·
We've Forgotten How to Use Computers
- dcchambers 3y ago:%s/computers/mouse/g
- robertn702 3y agohttps://archive.is/eslhM https://archive.is/eslhM
- matthewn 3y agoOdd title for a piece that is mostly an elegy for the mouse.
- gnabgib 3y agoYou can see by the URL slug, someone (editor possibly?) renamed the article from "Computer Mouse Evolution". The description ("The mouse is sorely missed.") and social share messages ("The computer mouse has receded into the shadows(..)") reflect the original.
- SoftTalker 3y agoThe reason the original Macintosh mouse had only one button: so users would not need to remember which one to click. That was a Jobs mandate.
- Dalewyn 3y agoTo be brutally honest: Job is (was?) right. To this day I see most people do not understand right-clicking, and why should they? Context menus are not in-your-face obvious, let alone right-click dragging and other esoteric maneuvers. I see something similar with touchscreens too: Most people don't know much beyond pinch to zoom. Any gestures or input involving 3 fingers or more is literal pig latin. Simplifying the mouse down to one button is an engineering decision that aligns with human psychology, even if it's one that rustles the jimmies of many nerds and beards.
- jwells89 3y agoI think that the Mac convention of control-clicking to open context menus, introduced somewhere around Mac OS 8, is easier to remember for the average person than right-clicking is. In my experience people generally grasp conditionals like chording better than visually identical buttons behaving arbitrarily differently.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago> "visually identical buttons" uh, except for their physical placement and accessibility with a given digit, sure.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago> To this day I see most people do not understand right-clicking, and why should they? Context menus are not in-your-face obvious, let alone right-click dragging and other esoteric maneuvers. This was the reason why Microsoft introduced Minesweeper to Windows 3.1: > https://web.archive.org/web/20190925214943/https://mentalfloss.com/uk/technology/32106/the-true-purpose-of-solitaire-minesweeper-hearts-and-freecell https://web.archive.org/web/20190925214943/https://mentalflo... "Decades later, in 1992, the Microsoft version Minesweeper was introduced to Windows 3.1—not to demonstrate that Windows was an adept gaming operating system, but to make the idea of left and right clicking second nature for Windows users, and to foster speed and precision in mouse movement."
- esafak 3y agoThat is a great theory, but where is the proof? I've read the article.
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoRead the whole article. Similar "coincidences" also exist for the other Windows games. On the other hand: if you do consider these coincidences to be spurious, I won't urge you to change your opinion. Instead I give a famous quote from the movie Matrix: "This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes… Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more…" (quoted from https://www.matrixfans.net/movies/the-matrix/transcript/ https://www.matrixfans.net/movies/the-matrix/transcript/)
- dromio 3y agoWhat is this article even trying to say? Clickbait title but the whole thing is about using a mouse? Yeah, interfaces are evolving. Most of the populace use a computer not for using's sake, but to accomplish a goal. Touchscreens are great for information consumption and free-form entry. Keyboards are good for text production. What is a mouse good for other than manipulating 2d objects?
- a_gnostic 3y ago3D PC gaming? Kb/mouse > game pad > touch screen
- skyyler 3y agoI still think the trackball should have taken off for FPS games. Huge flicks and fine precision on the same device without a dpi switch...
- LightHugger 3y agoTrackball is my 100% goto for a tiny desk/table or even in bed, basically any time i want to control the pointer without swinging my whole arm around. But mouse is far more precise specifically because you are throwing your whole arm around in addition to your wrist and fingertips. there is a far wider range of speeds you can be very precise at. Trackball is not great for FPS, though it's better than trackpads.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>What is a mouse good for other than manipulating 2d objects? Precise control. I absolutely refuse to play an FPS or operate a productivity program (eg: Illustrator, Powerpoint) without a proper mouse. Trying to do that on a touchpad or a touchscreen is a hell I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemies.
- adrian_b 3y agoI agree about mouse vs. touchpad and touchscreen. Nevertheless, there are alternatives to a mouse. A trackball can have very similar precise control while being more comfortable (for a productivity program; less suitable for a FPS, because the fingers are slower than the hand). A stylus on a graphic tablet used in mouse mode (i.e. relative mode) offers even faster and more precise control than any mouse.
- bdcravens 3y agoMany have never used a floppy, updated a config.sys, or attached a serial, parallel, or ps/2 port. And it's perfectly fine.
- jhbadger 3y agoYes, but there are things that aren't so obsolete about using a computer that many young people don't know anymore and which are really still needed. I'm not the only person who has noticed that teaching the current generation of undergraduates that many of them don't understand the idea of a hierarchical file system, whether using the graphical folder analogy or as directories. They have trouble understanding that programs on computers save things in locations that you need to navigate to when trying to find it again. It isn't that these young people are stupid, it's that many of them are just used to phones where this idea either doesn't exist or is hidden from user access.
- zabzonk 3y agoi remember teaching people about hierarchical file systems in the early 1990s - so no not much has changed.
- jhbadger 3y agoTrue, but there was a good 20 year period or so when even non-technical people were familiar with it from using their own computers.
- bogwog 3y agoWell, not knowing about this in the 90s was reasonable. Not knowing about it today is a failure somewhere in our education system/society/whatever.
- Dalewyn 3y agoI argue it's a failure to continue teaching something that humans do not and will not understand, and arguably also do not want in the first place. Computers for most people are just another household appliance or tool of their trade. They use computers to achieve certain tasks and they don't have time nor interest to figure out the details of how. They want the results, not the process. Abstraction of the file system is a step in the right direction, even if it rustles the jimmies of nerds and beards everywhere.
- Dalewyn 3y agoKind of related: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/27/2032200/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/27/2032200/students-do... Ultimately though, we need to remember that mice, keyboards, touchscreens, et al. are all merely compromises that were developed to let humans who speak human communicate with computers who speak computer. If we figure out an overall better way than the means before, it's natural they will be superceded. I do agree with the author that the mouse lends itself very well to precision control, though. Touchscreen is easy and readily available, but it leaves much to be desired for precise control.
- zabzonk 3y agoyou ain't joking about touch screen accuracy - i have one hell of a time touching on the HN page's links!
- doubled112 3y agoI have an iPhone 13 Mini, and it reminds me constantly that the logout link on HN is global, and I have many computers. Maybe too many.
- msie 3y agoI'm reminded of this every time I try to edit a url on iPhone Safari...Yes, I know about the space bar trick.
- ghaff 3y agoOn my desktop computer I have both a big Mac touchpad and a good (non-Apple) mouse. I switch back and forth between them depending on what I'm doing. If I'm on a laptop, I mostly stick with the touchpad.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoamazingly, perhaps, on my laptop, i have a touchpad AND a perfectly viable 3 button button zone. I do love the "real" mouse i use on my desktop system (logitech mx master 3), but there's no reason why a laptop can't "natively" support both mouse button and touchpad interaction styles.
- minedwiz 3y agoArticle about the death of the mouse has an odd section slagging on gaming mice. Sure.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago[dead]
- BWStearns 3y agoAgree with everyone on the weird mouse focus. I read this expecting/hoping for a discussion of how the appification of everything is impacting users (like why are the youngins not running circles around millennials when it comes to computers?) or maybe a discussion about how complexity in modern systems has gotten so great that it’s becoming roughly impossible to tame in a reliable long term manner or something. What a waste of a great title.
- debacle 3y agoDid we ever learn?
- dist-epoch 3y ago> die-cut air vents They're called speed holes, because they make the mouse go faster.
- gnabgib 3y agoLucky I was wearing this extra-large piece of the cross today. I think I'll go inside
- nickaflip 3y agoI’ve never, in my life, heard someone say “let’s double-click on that idea”
- karaterobot 3y agoI have. The first time I heard it, I thought it was a good metaphor, so I started using it myself. Later I learned it was already a cliche, so I stopped.
- gumby 3y agoI could have written this article in 1998 but complaining that "we've" forgotten how to use the card punch. Instead humanity uses supercomputers now.
- mikewarot 3y agoIndeed, I keep a virtual VAX 11/780 in my pocket for old times sake. It's running OpenVMS (TM) VAX Version V7.2, and you can telnet into it. 8)
- karaterobot 3y agoWe've (as a society, probably not many people in this thread) somewhat shifted away from using a particular interface pattern, which is different than forgetting how to use computers. That's not too big of a deal; usage changes. The thing that makes me feel less confident about the future is that it seems like fewer even people want to know how computers work, even though they mediate their lives through them. There was a generation or two of people who had the opportunity to understand computers, because they were cheap enough to get access to them, and they were open enough (in every sense) to actually be tinkered with. I don't necessarily believe we're living through a civilization-wide decline of the post-Western Roman Empire variety, because I'm not even sure what that means in a globally connected world. But there are localized areas and domains where it seems like it is, just like there are certain domains where it may seem like the opposite is happening.
- kkfx 3y agoMh... I agree with the title, not much with the content... Back then as a student I was using laptops as desktop replacer, as many others, but when I seriously star using computers I realize that I need a desktop, with a decent keyboard and a thumb trackball. All wired. I realize how stupid big laptops are, since they should exists just for portability needs and on-the-go limited usages. NOT used docked, NOT used directly as a desktop replacer. The mouse here is somewhat substituted by touch screens for those who work on small laptops typically NOT on the go, but mouse means in many case just "consumption" not production. Plan 9 have tried to be mouse centric, but ultimately fail because while some geek find the wow effect in drawing rectangles on a screen and filling them with live text it's just wasted time compared to free tiling modes like Emacs offer. Mouse is useful, yes, but definitively not the thing users forgot about computers. Users forgot the CLASSIC desktop model, where they own the data and the system to manipulate data, bendable at their own will with few line of user-programming live code. Users have even forgot what's a file https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc... and as they are mostly unable to handle their own paper files they are equally unable to handle their digital files. They have lost the paper knowledge, but never acquired the computer knowledge. The mouse here count next to nothing. Most people nowadays works like dumb terminals operators of the past with the important difference that the mainframe is not their own, but a distant systems owned by third parties "the cloud". Most people nowadays can't produce anything, only consume, choose stuff pushed in front of them by some ML system...
- Izkata 3y agoThat post pins the shift around 2017, but here's one that mentions it and more from 2013: http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoIan Bogost, You've forgotten how to use computers, assuming you ever knew how.
- tomjen3 3y ago>Many people had a hard time moving and clicking at the same time, and “double-clicking” was a skill one had to learn There is never any reason to bother worrying about double clicking. It is just a shortcut to select the default interaction option, which is equally available by selecting the interaction option (usually the right mouse button) and choosing it from there. In fact the great part of the mouse is how much discovery it enables: you can move the mouse over any element of the screen and see how you can interact with it based on which icon is shown. If you don't know what you can do with a given item, you can right click it and get a menu list. Apple famousely only had one mouse button, and options where shown when you clicked the option button. If Windows had something similar, do you think people would have realised it could also be used when dragging? I still remember when the group I was in realized you could right-drag things and get a useful menu when you did. I can't remember whether we were CS students at the time or had graduated.