Stephen Fry and Sick Buildings
September 21, 2007I have a PC and its sole purpose is to give me a platform for two simulators that I enjoy; one lets me fly planes that I could never otherwise afford, and the other does the same thing with cars. One day I’ll have an intel Mac and I’ll be able to run these on that machine via Boot Camp. For now I set up the PC once a week and have a fly, or a drive, then pack it away again.
I may now be getting a little jaded though, because the weeks are turning into fortnights, and then months. It’s just becoming too much of a hassle to set the thing up. It all comes back to that Mac difference that I’m always trying to put a finger on. Yesterday I read a new blog by Stephen Fry. In his blog he says:
Design matters
By design here, I mean GUI and OS as much as outer case design. Let’s go back to houses. The sixties taught us, surely, that architectural design, commercial and domestic, is not an extra. The office you work in every day, the house you live in every day, they are more than the sum of their functions. We know that sick building syndrome is real, and we know what an insult to the human spirit were some of the monstrosities constructed in past decades. An office with strip lighting, drab carpets, vile partitions and dull furniture and fittings is unacceptable these days, as much perhaps because of the poor productivity it engenders as the assault on dignity it represents. Well, computers and SmartPhones are no less environments: to say “well my WinMob device does all that your iPhone can do” is like saying my Barratt home has got the same number of bedrooms as your Georgian watermill, it’s got a kitchen too, and a bathroom.”
Thank you Stephen. I know know what my problem is. I have sick computer syndrome.
