From: kanefsky@halcyon.com (Steve Kanefsky)
Subject: Re: More Defense of CLI (there, I changed the subject ... )
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 22:47:04 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.202113.23250@gvl.unisys.com> dave@prc.unisys.com (David Lee Matuszek) writes:
>In article <6203.2adadad3@hayes.com> bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct12.221502.12684@nwnexus.WA.COM>, kanefsky@halcyon.com (Steve Kanefsky) writes:
>>>>
>>>>With the mouse, you have to think of where the menu is, then you REACH OUT
>>>>AND GRAB IT. There's almost no cognitive load.
>>> 
>>> This is utter nonsense.  
>>
>>It is not.
>>
>>> They keyboard is, in fact, easier to reach out
>>> and grab than a menu on the screen, because you are literally
>>> reaching out and grabbing it, rather than going through the mouse 
>>
>>Not true.
>>
>>A two-year old can use a mouse. You don't need to even spell or understand
>>what letters are to use a mouse. All you have to do is move it like you move
>>it on the screen. Simple.
>
>I'd like to add my $0.02 here, before people start protesting that
>they're not two years old any more.
>
>The point isn't that a two-year old can use a mouse.  The point is
>that things people learn early in life are more deep-seated and
>fundamental, and require less higher-level intellectual activity.

That doesn't necessarily matter.  Just because a two-year old can do
task A but not task B doesn't mean that an adult can't do task B more
efficiently than task A.  Otherwise we'd all be crawling everywhere we
go instead of walking, running, driving, flying airplanes, etc.


>You can use a mouse literally without thinking about it.  On occasion,
>working with someone else at their terminal, I have been momentarily
>frustrated because I couldn't get to the mouse to point at something
>on the screen, only to realize I could use a finger for this purpose.
>(Admittedly, I'm highly practiced with the mouse.)

I still claim that using the mouse needs to be taught.  Having to pick
up the mouse and move it back onto the pad is decidedly *non* intuitive
to many people.  On the other hand, even rats can be taught to press a
particular key.  I also sincerely doubt that a two-year old could be
taught to understand a standard file dialog box.  My pioint is that
you're comparing apple's and oranges.  Many of the things a two-year old
can be taught to use the mouse for could also be done with just a single
keypress.  The more complex things you can do in a GUI still require
language and higher cognitive processes.  


>Learning the alphabet, learning to read, and learning to use a
>keyboard are all HARD, and involve intense mental effort.  It may not
>seem that way now, since you learned these things so long ago, but it
>was a lot of work at the time.  Today the intellectual activity is
>unconscious, or nearly so, but it's still substantial compared with
>the effort of grabbing a physical object (the mouse) and waving it
>around.

Actually it's very hard to grab a physical object.  Ask a robot.  Your
own argument applies here.  You learn it so early you don't realize it's
hard.  



>Humans have a surprisingly limited "mental bandwidth."  The
>psychologist George Miller published, in 1956, an article entitled
>"The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our
>capacity for processing information."  (Psychological Review 63,
>p. 81-97).  Citing a variety of experiments, he showed how even trivial
>tasks took mental processing power away from other, concurrent tasks;
>a lot of work has been done since on "cognitive load."  Ignore this
>work at your own risk.

Well, I'm sure you're aware how oversimplified this is.  The mind has
the ability to process lots of things in parallel.  There are some areas
that can get overloaded, but you can do two or more non-conflicting
tasks at the same time.  I can type or talk at the same time I'm
thinking up what to type or say next.  A human can listen to what
someone's saying and "shadow" them (repeat what they are saying) with
just a tiny fraction of a second delay.  If the first person makes a
mistake, the second person can even correct it in that tiny fraction of
a second.  What that says to me is that humans have a substantial
capacity for processing verbal and even written language.  Otherwise we'd 
all be using sign language.  We have CLI's because there's just some
things that are easier to say with words than with gestures.

--
Steve Kanefsky

>
>I personally use the commoner keyboard shortcuts all the time, such as
>control-C and control-V, but I don't think I have ever used them
>without thinking of the letter (except in highly repetitive tasks,
>where I fall into a physical pattern).  Even this trivial effort of
>thinking of the name of the letter is (usually) greater than the
>mental effort expended in using the mouse; sure, there are exceptions.
>Neither the mouse nor the keyboard requires much of a mental effort,
>but there are cases where I'm deeply involved (have no mental
>bandwidth to spare), and trivial distractions do add up.
>
>Hence, I find the argument perfectly plausable that keyboard commands
>seem faster than mousing (but aren't) because the increased mental
>effort "fills up the time," thereby distorting one's perception of
>time.  Certainly, I have yet to see any alternative explanation.
>
>  --dave
>
>-- 
>
>It isn't pollution that's harming the environment.  It's the
>impurities in our air and water that are doing it.
>                -- Vice President Dan Quayle