Let's Kill the Hard Disk Icon

Kellym writes "The desktop metaphor is under attack these days. Usability experts and computer scientists like Don Norman, David Gelernter and George Robertson have declared the metaphor "dead." The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop"

Comments

That's right

[rho]

Since *I* don't have any problem with a complex machine, *EVERYBODY* else should find it easy as well. If they don't, they're just Lusers who need to get a life. Basically, they suck. I'm superior to them.

See, when I was in high school, I got teased and beat up a lot, and now that I'm in control of the machines that those lusers have to use everyday, I work *hard* to make them complex and unusable for their work (so I can make fun of how stupid they are and get back at them for those terrible years in high school), while I make it good for me and the things that I do.

This is classic nerd thinking. Alan Cooper wrote a whole book about how letting computer nerds design computer programs is wrong and stupid. The parent comment lends a lot of weight to his argument.