Re: falling on our faces (was: Conversion filters)

[mike shupp ms44278@xxxxxxxx]

Peter Evans wrote:
>
> Mike Shupp:
>
> >In 50 years then, we ought to expect PC software with
> >somewhere between 1000 to 1 billion times the capability
> >of current day software. Even leaning so far to the
> >conservative side that we fall on our faces, software
> >ought to be more capable than we can even dream of
> >today.

> Word comes with various "autoformatting" features turned on. Each of them
> is, I suppose, useful to some people. They can be turned off, and on my
> two computers in which Word is installed, I have turned most of them off.
> Because I can turn them off, I don't complain much about them. But they
> don't augur well for word processor helpfulness in the medium term.

Oh yes, for the next ten thousand years we are going to be getting mail
and
publications formatted according to the defaults plugged into our
software
by human factors types or (much more likely) programmers with no
particular
interest or flair in esthetics, and far future archaeologists will look
into
our trash dump-middens and confidently speak of "the WordPerfect 8
People",
"the JavaWrite Culture" and so on with the same assurance than art
historians
use when dating Byzantine ikons and Italian cathedral paintings.

It isn't all that wonderful a picture. What can I say? Except possibly
that
we XyWrite-NotaBena rebels will have known a little more freedom and
happiness
than survives in the record of the rubbish.

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Mike Shupp
Graduate Student, Dept of Anthropology
California State University, Northridge
ms44278@xxxxxxxx
http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm