Einde van een aantal Metaforen

For twenty years and a bit we’ve been using the same paradigm for our computer.

You organise your world like folders. You shift your documents around on a desktop. We did this on Mac OS 1. And we’re still doing it.

Since the early nineties we’re doing Wysiwyg word processing. Even Wordperfect 5.1 tried it a bit. But then Microsoft Word took over. We wrote our pieces of virtual Paper. Often ruining it with too much fonts. Or even worse, Comic Sans. But we kept thinking those pages were the only way too write, even if we printed those documents less and less.

And for some reason every presentation is a list of bullet points. 30 sheets with 15 bullet points are no exception. People died of boredom during presentations. Space shuttles crashed. The average high military person spends most of his time on Powerpoint…

But luckily..times are changing. In the last few weeks I discovered the Paradigm is changing. Productity software seems to refit modern usage.

Last month I discovered Scrivener. It does away with the Virtual Paper. It builds documents like you built up your story or documents. You start with a structure, fill things in at time, reshuffle stuff. And only then you make it ready to print. Furthermore, it keeps you research on the place were you need it, and has a full screen mode to lose all those fancy stuff. The Word Paradigm has been overtrown. Popper will dance with joy.

Then I discovered Prezi. I was already using Powerpoint less and less for presentations, just as a tool to show some pictures to tell my story with. And Keynote made slides look better. But now there is Prezi. Zooming in and out of your text, letting things appear when relevant and msot importantly, One big canvas, thus freeing us from Slides, which had locked us in since the old days of the overhead projector.

And now Apple has taken a final step. The iPhone made us realise most people need Apps, instead of an OS. Chrome made us think about if there was more needed than a browser. Hopefully Mac OSX Lion will be the first step into a computer environment just built to facilitate, instead of dominate. Although I can live less with Apple closing my computer than closing my Phone…..

Thus a brave new world has dawned. And just in time to enjoy on my new MacBook…

(oorspronkelijk verschenen op ricklindeman.nl )