A bit of trivia about how doors should open: The Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago resulted in laws that required doors in buildings to push out from the inside in the event of needing to exit in a hurry.
I love the exploration of bad design through doors. There's little in life that irks me as much as using something and thinking, within seconds, that there's some element of it that must have passed through quality control when everyone was looking the other way.
I also have a lot of love for the notion of effort carrying us further than (or at least as far as) effort. I teach loads of my children the story about Cristiano Ronaldo and his early days and Manchester United and one of his teammates trying to beat him to training in the morning and finding out that he had to arrive four hours early to do it. Hard work made that man one of the all-time greats.
What's crazy about the Xerox and Steve Jobs story is that not only did Xerox not realize the value of the mouse, they also didn't capture the potential from having built the first "personal computer," Alto. In evolutionary terms, the mouse was a great GUI feature but the Alto was a powerful host that could have descended into so much more.
This quote from Wikipedia is wild:
"It is unlikely that a person outside of the computer-science research community will ever be able to buy an Alto. They are not intended for commercial sale, but rather as development tools for Xerox, and so will not be mass-produced. What makes them worthy of mention is the fact that a large number of the personal computers of tomorrow will be designed with knowledge gained from the development of the Alto." - Byte Magazine, 1981
Once again an inspirational edition!
A bit of trivia about how doors should open: The Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago resulted in laws that required doors in buildings to push out from the inside in the event of needing to exit in a hurry.
Thanks Mike a nice intellectual birthday gift for me! And Taylor Swift.
Happy birthday Grandpa!
I love the exploration of bad design through doors. There's little in life that irks me as much as using something and thinking, within seconds, that there's some element of it that must have passed through quality control when everyone was looking the other way.
I also have a lot of love for the notion of effort carrying us further than (or at least as far as) effort. I teach loads of my children the story about Cristiano Ronaldo and his early days and Manchester United and one of his teammates trying to beat him to training in the morning and finding out that he had to arrive four hours early to do it. Hard work made that man one of the all-time greats.
Great lesson there.
What's crazy about the Xerox and Steve Jobs story is that not only did Xerox not realize the value of the mouse, they also didn't capture the potential from having built the first "personal computer," Alto. In evolutionary terms, the mouse was a great GUI feature but the Alto was a powerful host that could have descended into so much more.
This quote from Wikipedia is wild:
"It is unlikely that a person outside of the computer-science research community will ever be able to buy an Alto. They are not intended for commercial sale, but rather as development tools for Xerox, and so will not be mass-produced. What makes them worthy of mention is the fact that a large number of the personal computers of tomorrow will be designed with knowledge gained from the development of the Alto." - Byte Magazine, 1981