Comment by Detrus
11 years ago
Doug Engelbart of Mother of All Demos fame talked a lot about artifacts. Books are an artifact of paper and text. WISIWYG is an artifact of print media.
The technology of the medium determines the best way to convey information through it. And on top of that, whatever people are used to may influence what they do in a newer medium. For example we write to imitate speech. We use books on screens and try to recreate the world of print with WISIWYG design tools.
Text may be an evolutionary winner so far, but it is by no means some ideal artifact for communicating when computers are widespread.
Text may be an evolutionary winner so far, but it is by no means some ideal artifact for communicating when computers are widespread.
Which is...right now.
Yes. There are few serious attempts to come up with better artifacts because we're so used to existing ones.
And another point of Doug is we're too lazy to learn complex new artifacts. Reading and writing takes a while but it's worth it. If someone comes up with a better idea that needs time to master it will be a hard road ahead, people like short learning curves when dealing with computers.
On a small scale I do think we have been developing new ways of expressing and communicating though. Smileys to me are a good example of this, but you can even include the 'x is typing a message' and 'read at <time>'.
While there is no universal consensus on what exactly this kind of 'information' means, within specific groups (and ages) they can convey a lot.
I've been chatting since I was fifteen or so, and to me and many people I chat with, a particular smiley, or the 'is typing' message can have a lot of meaning. I even find myself actively 'manipulating' this information at times: I might intentional start and stop typing at times as an analogue to the face-to-face act of saying 'hmm', looking away thoughtfully and not answering immediately.
I suspect all this meaning encoded in non-text things (practically speaking) is even more common among younger people.
The only better solution I can think of is direct interfacing between brain and computer (network(s)).
But, evolution continues
Very rarely is WYSIWYG in a plain text format. When the author talks about text he doesn't refer to WYSIWYG.