From literacy to digiracy: Economist

May 16th 2008
From Economist.com

Will reading and writing remain important?

THE Macintosh has a lot to answer for. The first time your correspondent clapped eyes on its graphical user interface (GUI), he realised the game was up. The use of icons instead of written words seemed the final admission that we had given up trying to read and write, and had entered a post-literate age.

The Apple Macintosh wasn’t the first computer to have a GUI based on windows, icons, menus and pointing devices (known collectively as “wimp”). Back in the early 1970s, Xerox pioneered most of the wimp features with its legendary Alto personal computer for researchers, and later its Star computer for office use.

But Apple brought the dumbed-down pictorial interface to the rest of the world. And once Microsoft followed suit, by grafting a friendly Windows face on its crusty old MS-DOS operating system, it became the norm.

No question, without a wimpy GUI, computers would never have become as popular as they are today. The command-line interface—with its forbidding prompt and blinking cursor—required mastering a whole catechism of arcane instructions that only a priesthood of computerdom could cherish.

When “root@computername:~# shutdown -h now” could be replaced by a simple click of a mouse to switch off a computer, novices of all ages and backgrounds could climb aboard the digital bandwagon...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: From literacy to digiracy: Economist