# Re: Agent-mediated access (was Re: Criticism of Kidcode...)

Terje Norderhaug (Norderhaug.CHI@xerox.com)
Sat, 24 Jun 1995 00:20:39 -0800

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    Message-Id: <ac1177e1030210043962@[130.191.70.74]>

    Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 00:20:39 -0800

    To: nazgul@utopia.com (Kee Hinckley), Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>

    From: Norderhaug.CHI@xerox.com (Terje Norderhaug)

    Subject: Re: Agent-mediated access (was Re: Criticism of Kidcode...)

At 7:00 PM 6/23/95, Kee Hinckley wrote:
>At 3:46 PM 6/21/95, Peter Deutsch wrote:
>>is to render it. This is a very limiting world view.
>>We're moving towards a world where it wont just be humans
>>using these things and we wont want to see just files.
>>Forcing people to work through the GUI (selecting URLs to
>>fetch, for example) is going to be way too limiting for
>>the long run.
>
>This argument has been used against file systems for a long time. You
>really want a sea of objects, etc., etc.. Lots of attempts have been and
>are being made in that direction - but when it comes down to it, J. Random
>User has enough trouble with file system abstractions, they tend to get
>lost if you take those concrete metaphors away.

Far off. The user interfaces acknowledged as most user friendly abstract
far beyond what really happens on the hardware. Take the Mac OS as an
example. Average Joes tend to get lost when it gets too concrete. That's
why those that are aware of these issues move away from the "file" metaphor
on user interfaces and towards a "document" metaphor, where the physical
storage is abstracted off. Naturally, those that are somewhat more techie
might have some problems with this, but then again, we aren't exactly J
Randoms. Except that programming (and even hardware deign) has to do about
bulding abstractions as well...

-- Terje <Norderhaug.CHI@Xerox.com>
<URL:http://www.ifi.uio.no/~terjen/>

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