Technology

59605 readers

3011 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

230

"How to help someone use a computer.", a guide from 1996 (pages.gseis.ucla.edu)

submitted 8 months ago by otter@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A friend shared a post from someone else that was talking about this article. I've quoted the text from that post below:

This is a 1996 guide on how to help someone use a computer. It's strikingly resonant with 'how to be a parent', or really 'how to help anyone with anything'. A nice example of "the universal within the particular"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] anamethatisnt@lemmy.world 34 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Computers often present their users with textual messages, but the users often don't read them.

So many times I've just been a fancy TTS (Text to speech) assistant.
End user: Sends MMS of error message.
Me: Calls end user and reads the error message out loud.
End user: Oh! Thanks! Problem solved.
Me: No problem, have a good day.

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 24 points 8 months ago

The trick to make this stop is to be an expensive text-to-speech engine.