Technology has come a long way… or has it?

Watching a recent Scoble Show podcast it struck me just how far technology has developed over the years. The picture below shows an early hard disk drive which could store 48 megabytes of data. Nowadays you can buy a 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) hard drive for your PC for under £200.

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However when it comes to software and computer interaction how far have we progressed. The most common interaction with my computer consists of ctrl c, v, s and p. All commands that I learnt 30 years ago in an early version of WordStar.

I also remember when Windows 1995 first came out and a news story on the BBC where they asked the public what they thought of the shiny new interface. The most common question was ‘how do you turn it off?’ Everyone could see the start button in the bottom left handside of the screen, but there was no equivalent stop button. This unintuitive arrangement has lasted right the way through to today with Vista.

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