July 23, 2011

Prescience

The scene: a demonstration in the mid-70s of an early multitasking OS at Xerox PARC:

To illustrate the flexibility of the system, the Xerox presenter clicked from a window in which he had been composing software code to another window that displayed a newly arrived e-mail message. He quickly read and replied to the message, then hopped back to the programming window and continued coding. Some in the audience applauded the new system. They saw that it would enable people to use their computers much more efficiently. Others recoiled from it. “Why in the world would you want to be interrupted — and distracted — by e-mail while programming?” one of the attending scientists angrily demanded.

— Excerpted from Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows. Highly recommended.

Post a Comment

Name

Email (Optional, will not be shown)

URL (Optional)

Are you sentient?

 No — I am a robotic advertisement delivery system. Please ignore my comment.

 Yes — I am at least as sentient as D.A.R.Y.L. Please post my comment.

Comments use Markdown syntax. HTML will be stripped out.

• New para: two carriage returns
• Emphasis: *emphasis*
• Bulleted list: - bullet item
• Ordered list: 1. numbered item
• Blockquote: > "To the Batcave!"
• URLs get automatically linked: http://yahoo.com
• To create an inline link like Yahoo!: [Yahoo!](http://yahoo.com/)

Comment