On Fri, 2005-11-25 at 07:16 +0530, dipankar das wrote: > On Friday 25 November 2005 06:11, Rajarshi Guha wrote:
> But, as A Mani also pointed > out, or, i read it that way, the GUI and GUI, and more importantly, GUI > without the sense of the man-machine interface, which is impossible in an MSW > system, from the childhood, creates a mindset that actually fosters and feeds > this process of postcolonial colonialism. Does an MSW system refer to Microsoft? If so, should it really be an Apply system? Or Xerox Parc System? So would the Linux GUI's also fall under the 'MSW system'. What do you specifically mean by the man-machine interface? I would think that a GUI interface is closer to a man-machine interface than a CLI and much closer than assembly. In fact, a CLI pushes the balance towards the side of the machine. I'm sure you'll agree that man (and in general mammals) are fundamentally visual creatures. From an evolutionary standpoint, our visual systems are highly developed. In this sense then, why would we not take advantage of our visual systems? Why would we force our interfaces into a mode that has to be 'learnt' as opposed to a mode which is 'instinctive'? Of course, current GUIs are not always well built, but thats what HCI research is for. In fact drop shadows are a very good use of our visual system to prioritize objects in a 2D plane. > This mindset works exactly the same way the process of 'mimicry' and 'lack' > works in a colonial mind. I must admit that I don't really know much of philosophy or political economy and so I can't comment on much of what you've said. But as you noted that this is quite a different forum than one for which your book was written for. So I'll stick to what I know :) The goal of the GUI was to make computer usage simpler. It so happens that the GUI metaphor is indeed a simpler way to handle a computer. For many purposes, a simpler interface is what is required. My question is: what is wrong with that? If I understand correctly, one of your points is that this simple interface leads to a 'dumbing down' of the users understanding. And I absolutely agree! But why would a user have to know about memory management and event handling loops to be able to save a recipe? My point, which it hasn't been addressed yet, is that if a user does not need to know about underlying details of a program, then why is a GUI a bad thing? Does the problem with the GUI arise because it has been 'imposed' from outside on the third world? But then could this not be said of a lot of good things that we enjoy - the car for instance or penicillin? ------------------------------------------------------------------- Rajarshi Guha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://jijo.cjb.net> GPG Fingerprint: 0CCA 8EE2 2EEB 25E2 AB04 06F7 1BB9 E634 9B87 56EE ------------------------------------------------------------------- Brain fried -- Core dumped -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
