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I am reminded of my first experience with a computer of any kind. I had
failed my second semester of typing in high school, and the challenge of
typing some material while in college was daunting. The computer was a DEC
Rainbow PC, running Rainbow Write. A friend offered to let me try this
remarkable piece of... engineering. Half an hour later, I was touch-typing
forty words per minute. I was not concerned with the mechanics of typing, or
even the operation of a still unfamiliar and now forgotten word processor. I
knew that any errors I made where easily correctable, whether they were
errors in typing, or in expression. I was working in an infinitely plastic
medium. Like the eighties PSA spots cautioning against trying cocaine said,
I felt addicted from the first time I used it (the word processor, not
cocaine).

As for this holy grail of transparent computing, two other events come to
mind. The first is when my then fourteen-year old nephew was visiting, and
sat down at my PC. I asked him if he had used Windows 9x before, and he
stated that he had not. With me only showing him the Start button, he
correctly intuited everything else he needed. I would dare say he was more
comfortable with a foreign interface than I was seeing KDE at HP World.

The second was when I got to teach a computer literacy course at a college,
to freshmen, in 1993, having previously taught only adult professionals. I
realized that they live in a world where you take Drivers Ed in high school,
and computer literacy in college. Computers hold no more mystique for them
than cars did for me when I took Drivers Ed in high school. They are
essentially part of the furniture in the world in which they live.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com
"I tried cocaine once,
but I did not inhale..."