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Time was, you could change radio stations in your car without taking your eyes off the road. You could even adjust the temperature, the seat, the lighting, and everything else, all without losing track of what was going on around you. But now, distracted driving is rapidly rising to the number one problem on the NHTSA's radar. How did all that change? Phones? Not quite. Touch-screens! Face it: Nobody actually likes touch-screens. How do I know this? Easy! We've always had them, but they never caught on. Well, we've had them at least as long as we've had VDUs. (That's Video Display Units, to you kids.) (As opposed to electric typewriters, which were the first interactive computer terminals.) There were even kits to replace your mouse with a sensor that would allow you to touch your screen instead. That company failed. Why? BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO TOUCH THEIR SCREEN! Well, then, why have touch-screens become so popular? Define popular! The truth is that the phone-addicts never actually learned how to use real keyboards and user-interfaces properly. They didn't grow up in the computing paradigm of, say, programmers, system administrators, or even authors, anyone who does a lot of writing, and uses more of their computer than most. The touch-screen is all they really know. The fact is that, portability was the holy grail of computing from its beginning. Computers used to fill entire buildings. Some still do. But you can now carry around on your wrist more computing power than landed men on the moon. This miniaturization was one of the 3 key advantages of computers that made them the indispesible tool. You see, anything a computer can do, you can do, but the computer can do it 1) faster, 2) smaller, and 3) without getting bored and giving up. The only problem was that, as computers shrank, humans ran into problems using them. How does one type into a smart watch? Now, originally, it was expected that we would have talking computers by now, and we do have them, but that, too, has proven, like the flying car, to be something no one really ever wanted, no matter how cool it looks on Star Trek. Think I'm kidding? Remember when cell-phones gained the ability to send text messages? It was an instant hit. Soon, more texts were being sent than calls being placed. And why would that be? It's not too hard to figure out. Can you imagine being on a plane full of people all talking to their smart-watches? And the smart-watches talking back?! So, here we are, with devices that we need to, nay want to type on, but are too small to type on. So, some compromise had to be arrived at. And that compromise is the touch-screen. But that's a long way from saying that we prefer it, or even just like it. We tolerate it, but only because the alternative is simply unacceptable. Even systems that can read your texts to you, and write texts for you, are not gaining wide acceptance. Even when people are alone in their cars, they appear to prefer to text rather than call. Thus texting has become the number one killer of young drivers. Sadly, they will have all died in vain. How so? Because they have succeeded in their goal of spreading their touch-screen insanity everywhere. And there appears to be no return to reason in sight. Cars, are now replacing all the studiously designed controls that used to be so easily identifiable by mere touch with featureless touch-screens that demand you take your eyes off the road in order to be sure you tap that image of a butten exactly correctly. Am I advocating keyboards in cars? No. Although I can type blind, and could probably drive while typing. I'm not offering an alternative; I'm offering a warning. How long will it be before commercial aircraft cockpits succumb to that same madness? And how many lives will be lost before their makers repent of that foolishness. 11:50 EST ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 11:27 EST ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 10:03 EST Why? A little bird told me! ;) I would make only a few, trivial additions/corrections to this. Edward Snowden is not the hero Hollywood portrayed him to be. Sometimes, telling the bad guys from the good guys is complicated by the fact that the bad guys so often fight among themselves. This is what some leftists use to argue that Nazis are the opposite of Communists/Socialist: Hitler fought Stalin, wherefore Hitler must have been right-wing, right? WRONG! Hitler was every bit the leftist that Stalin was. He even said so, multiple times. Even the very name of his party, the National Socialists, reflects this. It's just that Gadianton Robbers, as we see in the Book of Mormon, suffer no compunctions about murdering anyone who inconveniences them, even their very own. Witness Stalin's hit on Trotsky. Thus, it has sometimes been difficult to tell exactly whom to trust in our government. But, imho, anyone with sufficient spirit could easily identify such as Trey Gowdy, Jim Jordan, and Donald Trump. And some of our heroes from the past were anything but. The infiltration of our government didn't begin with George H. W. Bush. It was already well underway, as the John Birch Society has fairly well documented, almost from the very beginning. But the deal wasn't really sealed until Woodrow Wilson sold us down the river. More on this tomorrow. |