Bill Gates stated recently that the 3-key combination to reboot a Windows machine - Ctrl-Alt-Del - was a mistake. There were chuckles all around at the question and his mea culpa, but Bill and the chucklers missed something: By what standard do you say using three fingers is any less efficient than using two, or one?
Bill Gates: Control-Alt-Delete 'was a mistake' >
This is not a small question. It highlights a human weakness we too often forgive in ourselves and overlook in others: Laughing at what we don’t understand or understand too little.
I suspect the humor is embraced by a generation of one-finger typists conditioned to believe you can express anything worth expressing in 140 characters or less.
Bill Gates had to say it was a mistake otherwise he’d be considered a dinosaur.
Don’t misunderstand, it’s not about the work or mental agility needed to depress three keys simultaneously. (We do three things simultaneously all the time, and in more complicated contexts - eg, pick up a phone + read a phone number + dial; or steer + talk + depress the accelerator). It’s rather that someone thought the computer key combination was complicated and others laughed in ignorant confirmation; that’s what troubles me.
And Ctrl-Alt-Del is just an example. There are millions of instances where those doing things a new way scoff at those who did it an old way, as if the old way was naive or dumb or inferior; the old ways are no dumber than the way we do things today, and the way we do things today will be no dumber than how we do them tomorrow.
My 2¢: Steve Jobs was more enabler than genius.
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