Re: Conversion filters (was NB Win availability)

[mike shupp ms44278@xxxxxxxx]

leslie bialler wrote:
>
> mike shupp concluded:
>
> > I's not just word processers that get left behind by "progress."
>
> Yup. Someday, maybe 50 years from now, some guy's going to suffer a broken index finger and wonder if there isn't some way to make a computer perform operations w/o him having to resort to pointing and clicking.
> "What if," he will say to himself, "I could simply type "copy" and then type file name and then instruct the computer where to copy it to. . . . hmm and hmm, might _just_ be possible."


Amusing... but I'd hope in 50 years software would have moved on to the
point where we needn't concern ourselves with such low-level
activities. We don't really want to copy and merge files and move them
about, for example; we want up-to-date financial records and stamp
catalogs and print-ready manuscripts. How much better it would be if we
could simply give such high level commands-- ideally orally-- and let
our computers
figure out for themselves how our desires should be satisfied.

Consider all this recent discussion of word processor file conversion
filters, for example. Is there any sane reason why we humans ought
to pay attention to such details? Note that the quite comparable
process of shipping data packets around the internet to produce
pretty pictures and sounds and information displays on our monitors
takes place, for the most part, without the slightest need for user
intervention.


---------------------------------------------------------

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