i bought a book by ted nelson the other day, “computer lib”. it’s all over the place, there are multiple columns, many diagrams and pictures, it can be read from either end. basically he tried to prevent the reader starting at page one and reading straight through. i like it a lot.
i looked him up on youtube. there’s a nice minute or so here where he talks about usability and interfaces, all of which i agree with. he uses pac-man as a model. which leads me nicely to a joke i heard the other day from marcus brigstock:
There’s a lot of controversy about video games and children, but if Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.
