For the last few days we have played with the Kinect, slept, ate, and let the dog out.
(An aside: When you all let your dogs out so they can squat in the snow, does anyone else think of that scene in The Long Winter when Pa Ingalls has to rescue the cows because their noses have frozen to the ground? Will Mac’s butt stick down there?)
So, this is to say, we played with the Kinect. And I just sat down at this PC, looked at the login screen, and thought, “How do I work this again?” I started to wave at the screen before it came back to me: Use the keys and touch pad. Right there.
It was just like the first day I used a mouse, in Mouse Class. I did not learn to use a mouse in-utero like the rest of you kids. I taught the IBM 8080 PC, in the snow, uphill, both ways, we got Windows, and I had to learn how to use a mouse. At one point the my Mouse 101 instructor said, “Now, hit the Enter key,” and I picked up the mouse and almost used it to hit the Enter key. That’s a lie. I did use it to hit the Enter key.
I am sure someday I will be the old lady in the grocery line poking at number keys on the payment machine when all it wants me to do is talk to it or lick it or let it touch my eyeball and deduct credits from my account.
4 responses to “Interfacing”
I had a very humiliating Dilbert Pointy Haired Boss moment early on when I couldn’t move the mouse because I’d run out of room.
The mother of a friend of mine used the mouse to wave at the screen at couldn’t understand why nothing was happening.
My favorite is trying to explain early drafting stations to our baby engineers. We didn’t have a mouse we had two wheels that worked kind of like an etch a sketch and a lot of menu based commands. Which then some smart aleck here counters with reminding me that they used a slide rule in college instead of an HP. I wonder if someday we’ll be drafting on touch screens and I’ll be trying to explain a mouse to someone.
I, too, remember my first mouse experience. But it was with a Mac. Why is it called a mouse, anyway?
Becs – I still run out of room. More often, I run into the cord.Amy_in_StL – if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing) there are some drawings of early mice that look like what you might be describing. SuburbanCorrespondent – Because the cord looks like a tail; that’s what wikipedia claims. I know where the term ‘bug’ came from: the bug that was literally jamming up the first computer is taped into a page in a log book at the Naval archives.