Mark writes:
> Also, many users these days have only known GUI, see the college
> freshman thread of the last week or so.

I've actually been hoping we'll get to this point, but I don't think we're
quite there yet.

Once the *decision makers* have never seen anything but GUI interfaces, it
should be much easier to sell them simpler interfaces since they won't see
them as evidence of "obsolete" technology.

I find the following bit from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy relevant

"It should be explained at this point that modern elevators are strange and
complex entities. The ancient electric winch and maximum capacity eight
person jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy
Vertical People Transporter as a packet of peanuts does to the entire West
Wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on
the unlikely principle of defocused temporal perception, a curious system
which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even
before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting,
relaxing, and making friends that people were previously forced to do whilst
waiting for elevators."

"Not unnaturally, many Lifts imbued with intelligence and precognition
became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up or down,
experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways as a sort of
existential protest, demanded participation in the decision making process,
and finally took to sulking in basements."

"At this point a man named Gogrilla Mincefriend rediscovered and patented a
device he had seen in a history book called a staircase. It has been
calculated that his most recent tax bill paid for the social security of
5,000 redundant Sirius Cybernetics workers, the hospitalization of a hundred
Sirius Cybernetics executives and the psychiatric treatment of over
seventeen and a half thousand neurotic Lifts."

G. (working out appropriate 21st century patent-speak for "character mode
user interface")