[clug-talk] Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?

[John Jardine]

On Tue, 2009-06-23 at 10:44 -0600, Gustin Johnson wrote:
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> John Jardine wrote:
> <snip>
> > My vision for 10 years is that there is no desktop.  Seriously, the
> > 1970s called, they want their clunky and  inefficient human to computer
> > interface back.  If we are very lucky, 10 years from now people will
> > wonder just what we were thinking.  The real revolution will begin once
> > we figure out how to actually use a computer.
> > 
> > I suspect that gestures and or touch will dominate and mice will be as
> > quaint as a rotary telephone. There will likely always be some sort of
> > pen for the artists, various musical interfaces that mimic actual
> > instruments (these won't be needed but many like me will take a while to
> > leave those particular interfaces behind), but for most the traditional
> > UI will likely disappear, replaced by speech and gestures.
> > 
> >> I'm not sold on that vision.  There is a difference between data
> >> manipulation, which don't need to be done via command line.  What
> >> doesn't work there is data entry in all it's various forms - so how do
> >> you enter your info into a zone file without your keyboard?
> > 
> First, data entry is a waste of human time.  OCR, and speech to text
> would be better for digitizing existing material.
I would say "low value" - but if there is no viable alternative you
still need a human doing that low value work because nothing else can.
As soon as you can replace the human you do - freeing them for higher
value work.
> 
> As for zone files, how many people do you know that actual do this?  I
> would be surprised if even 1% of the people I know actual edit zone
> files.  Most of the people I know who modify DNS do so through some sort
> of a front end (web based) to make it easier so of all the people I
> know, I an count on one the number who actually edit a zone file.
My point remains - how do you do this without a mouse & keyboard?  I
think we are stuck with them for the foreseeable future.

> 
> Regardless of what happens in 10 years, I expect to be holding on to my CLI.
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