{"id":1430,"date":"2020-07-10T20:54:50","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T20:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sdi.thoughtstorms.info\/?p=1430"},"modified":"2020-07-10T20:54:50","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T20:54:50","slug":"against-direct-manipulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/?p=1430","title":{"rendered":"Against Direct Manipulation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m debating on Twitter about Direct Manipulation.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Complicated for Twitter. Here&#39;s what I think in summary. <\/p>\n<p>Computing is about using language to tell computers to do things. Language enables grammatical composition and ever increasing levels of abstraction and expressivity  1<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; phil jones (he\/him &#8211; ele) @interstar@artoot.xyz (@interstar) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/interstar\/status\/1281652728310034433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 10, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nHere&#8217;s the first part of my discussion unrolled. I&#8217;m asked why I think the Desktop Metaphor has held us back. My response in 6 tweets. (Note that there&#8217;s a lot more good discussion in further pushback I get)<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"row t-tweet\">\n<div class=\"col-12\">\n<div id=\"tweet_1\" class=\"content-tweet allow-preview\" dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652728310034433\">Complicated for Twitter. Here&#8217;s what I think in summary.<br \/>\nComputing is about using language to tell computers to do things. Language enables grammatical composition and ever increasing levels of abstraction and expressivity \\1 <i class=\"fas fa-link\"><\/i><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652728310034433\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row t-tweet\">\n<div class=\"col-12\">\n<div id=\"tweet_2\" class=\"content-tweet allow-preview\" dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\">The great mistake and delusion in computer history, of which the desktop metaphor is just one major example, is &#8220;direct manipulation&#8221;.<br \/>\nPeople seem to love it and always fantasize about more of it &#8230; \\2<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-tweet allow-preview\" dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\">But with DM you switch from finding more and more elegant ways to TELL the computer to do stuff, to just &#8220;doing it yourself&#8221;<br \/>\nAnd once there&#8217;s a DM metaphor for a task, rather than a linguistic instruction, it gets locked-in and evolution grinds to a halt. \\3<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-tweet allow-preview\" dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\">Basically every time DM came to a paradigm of computing, the vocabulary froze at that point and at that level of abstraction.<br \/>\nDesktop metaphor for launching applications and WYSIWYG word-processors looks like the 70s. \\4<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-tweet allow-preview\" dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\">File systems look like the Mac finder from the 80s.<br \/>\nSpreadsheets started as a promising mix of visual and linguistic, but have DEVOLVED into mere grid-drawing GUIs.<br \/>\nIDEs haven&#8217;t even changed their menu layout since the 90s \\5<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-tweet allow-preview\" dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281652823944384512\">All progress in computer science depends on maintaining that gap between you telling the computer to do something, and what the computer does.<br \/>\nAll the force multipliers live in that gap. Close it and progress stops. \\end <i class=\"fas fa-link\"><\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"content-tweet allow-preview\" dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281688914546368513\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281688914546368513\">&#8212;-<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281688914546368513\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\" data-screenname=\"interstar\" data-tweet=\"1281688914546368513\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m debating on Twitter about Direct Manipulation. Here&#8217;s the first part of my discussion unrolled. I&#8217;m asked why I think the Desktop Metaphor has held us back. My response in 6 tweets. (Note that there&#8217;s a lot more good discussion in further pushback I get) &nbsp; Complicated for Twitter. Here&#8217;s what I think in summary. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[113],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-direct-manipulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thoughtstorms.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}