{"id":8178,"date":"2016-12-25T10:09:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-25T15:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=8178"},"modified":"2016-12-25T10:09:31","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T15:09:31","slug":"the-mouse-and-the-microphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=8178","title":{"rendered":"The mouse and the microphone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, I was trying to explain to someone the difference between entering a Web site&#8217;s address in the address field of a Web browser, vs. entering a search term in Google. I was not very successful. In the end, it doesn&#8217;t really matter&#8230; Google happily accepts a Web site address in its search field, and all modern browsers accept search terms in the address field, passing it on to the preconfigured search provider.<\/p>\n<p>But this experience reminded me of a clip from <em>Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home<\/em>. It&#8217;s when Scotty and McCoy\u00a0talk to a factory manager and Scotty tries\u00a0to show the chemical formula for &#8220;transparent aluminum&#8221;. When\u00a0McCoy\u00a0suggests the use of a computer, on old Mac sitting on a desk nearby, Scotty first tries to talk to it; and when McCoy\u00a0helpfully points at the mouse, Scotty picks it up as though it was a microphone tries talking\u00a0into it.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LkqiDu1BQXY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>What I realized is that\u00a0thirty years later, we basically gave up on the idea of trying\u00a0to educate users.\u00a0If that computer was built today, with users like Scotty in mind, we&#8217;d just put a damn microphone into the bleeping mouse. It&#8217;s just easier that way.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=8178' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, I was trying to explain to someone the difference between entering a Web site&#8217;s address in the address field of a Web browser, vs. entering a search term in Google. I was not very successful. In the end, it doesn&#8217;t really matter&#8230; Google happily accepts a Web site address in its search field, and <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=8178' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,23,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-film","category-programming","category-11-id","category-23-id","category-36-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8180,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178\/revisions\/8180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}