Analog SFF, December 2009 - By Dell Magazine Authors Page 0,2

(depending on which end was pressed), and that for some numbers sound came from the speakers, presumably from different radio stations. At that point he might start feeling a little smug, thinking he'd discovered “the future's” version of a tuning dial—until he noticed that the SEEK button caused the frequency numbers to scroll up automatically and stop on any signal strong enough to lock in; while SCAN made it scroll up, pause for a few seconds whenever it found a usable signal, and then resume scrolling unless he pressed it again right away. He'd also find that a row of pushbuttons labeled only with single-digit numbers printed on them each jumped immediately to a different frequency—and pressing FM again caused those same buttons to yield a whole different set of frequencies.

If he was lucky enough to find a CD or tape along with the radio/player, he probably wouldn't take too long to figure out where to put it in and discover that it also made sound came out if he pressed the right button (or, in the case of the CD, even if he didn't). He would also discover that the display had completely changed. Now, instead of “FM1” or “FM2,” part of it would say “TAPE” or “CD"; part would be a number like “3” or “11"; part would look like the reading on a running stopwatch, counting seconds; and part, at the very bottom, would be a series of geometrical shapes, like single or double arrowheads, squares, and parallel vertical lines, each above one of those numbered push buttons. In these modes, the numbers printed on those buttons have nothing to do with their functions; now, instead, of jumping to preselected radio stations, they do things like PLAY, REWIND, FAST FORWARD (within a track, for CDs), or SWITCH TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TAPE, and the display icon above each button tells which of those things it now does. And that TRACK/TUNE rocker now jumps to an earlier or later track on a CD.

If the tone quality didn't suit his tastes, he still wouldn't see a recognizable TONE, TREBLE, or BASS control; but he might eventually discover that repeatedly pressing the MODE knob caused it to cycle through displays including TREB, BASS, BAL, and FADE. When one of those was showing, rotating the same knob would vary the treble, bass, and relative amounts of sound coming from left or right and front or back. Except if he didn't start rotating it within a few seconds, that display would vanish and turning that knob would do nothing.

Most of us now are used to this sort of thing, so it seems relatively natural. There's enough variation in detail among models and manufacturers that it can still be helpful to read the instructions, but we're sufficiently accustomed to these general ways of doing things that most of us could figure out the details of an unfamiliar model without too much trial and error if we had to. But I can well imagine that the initial reaction of anybody in 1920, or even 1948, would be to think that somebody had put an awful lot of effort into making this thing fiendishly complicated and hard to use.

And just imagine his reaction if all he found was the remote for a television set, without realizing that it was just a control box for something else rather than a self-contained device intended to do something useful on its own!

Or an iPod, which would seem at first glance to have almost no controls at all. Or the laptop computer on which I'm writing this.

The kind of computer most of us now take for granted is an extreme example—at least, by past and present standards—of a simple-looking device that can do so many different things that probably no individual has ever been thoroughly familiar with all of them. At first glance, it's just a small box with a display screen and what looks like an old-fashioned typewriter keyboard, with a few extra keys with cryptic labels like “ctrl,” “esc,” or pictures of fruit. So how can it do so many things, each of which can be accomplished in at least two or three different ways? Part of it is by combining the regular keyboard keys with the special ones to make executable commands, but what a particular key combination does depends on what application (program) is currently active and even what part of it you're using. In one database program, for example, “Command-N” can mean