A friend shared a post from someone else that was talking about this article. I’ve quoted the text from that post below:
This is a 1996 guide on how to help someone use a computer. It’s strikingly resonant with ‘how to be a parent’, or really ‘how to help anyone with anything’. A nice example of “the universal within the particular”
So many times I’ve just been a fancy TTS (Text to speech) assistant.
End user: Sends MMS of error message.
Me: Calls end user and reads the error message out loud.
End user: Oh! Thanks! Problem solved.
Me: No problem, have a good day.
The trick to make this stop is to be an expensive text-to-speech engine.