21st century life in transition

Monday 8 February 2010This is nearly 15 years old. Be careful.

Sitting at the breakfast table, my wife Susan was reading the paper, and when she got to the end of a story, dragged her finger down the paper to try to scroll the newspaper.

I’ve sat in a movie theater watching trailers, and glanced at the bottom of the screen to try to see the progress bar to see how much time was left in the short clip.

Max said when he’s writing on paper with a pencil, and makes a mistake, his left hand twitches as if to hit cmd-Z.

» 14 reactions

Comments

[gravatar]
I tried to scroll google maps on my laptop with my finger the other day. Not quite as bad, but I totally understand the feeling. What's crazy is when that stuff starts working....
[gravatar]
Countless times I've started to reach for the 30-second rewind button while listening to the radio in my car, if I missed a part of the conversation. Thanks to TiVo and my iPhone for that one..
[gravatar]
Heh.. I've been reading on the kindle a great deal. And when reading printed text, I've more than once found myself reaching for the cursor control to look up words I don't know in the dictionary.
[gravatar]
Does digital to digital transition count? I recently found myself TABing to autocomplete while writing a letter on OpenOffice.
[gravatar]
After receiving King's Quest III for my Radio Shack Color Computer 3 for Christmas as a child and playing for an entire week straight, I was startled to find myself trying to hit the keystroke for "diagonal-down" when I reached the top of my parent's stairs. :-)
[gravatar]
Christian Oudard 10:58 AM on 8 Feb 2010
I sometimes catch myself doing the motion for Ctrl-F when scanning for something in a paper book.
[gravatar]
I remember that some years ago I tried to copy-paste part of my grocery list from one post-it to another. I pretty much did a mouse select and then "hit" Ctrl-C before I realized it wasn't working. :D
[gravatar]
I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and there was a hard-to-read figure in a power point. It took all the restraint I could muster not to pinch-to-zoom.
[gravatar]
I thought of another one. I've been at a Red Sox game, watched a close play occur at first, and then waited for the replay to follow, fully expecting to see it on the live field.
[gravatar]
...what's a "newspaper"?
[gravatar]
Jonathon Duerig 1:03 PM on 9 Feb 2010
It is only a matter of time before I go into a public restroom, stand there with my hands under the sink, and wave them around before realizing that it isn't motion-activated.
[gravatar]
My most frequent one is the sequence "Esc :wq" to exit any program ranging from Terminal, to Word!
[gravatar]
I have a vim abbreviation "Ydate" that expands to the current date. I've written it on whiteboards, then experienced a moment of surprise when it didn't work.
[gravatar]
Today I tapped the upper right corner of my iPod screen to view the list of songs on the album I was currently playing... but it's a nano, not a touch.

Add a comment:

Ignore this:
Leave this empty:
Name is required. Either email or web are required. Email won't be displayed and I won't spam you. Your web site won't be indexed by search engines.
Don't put anything here:
Leave this empty:
Comment text is Markdown.