In the next century, researchers will discover that the GUI wasn't designed to make computing harder by forcing people to find cryptic little symbols, randomly arranged on the screen, and break routine operations into tiny sequences of manual steps. And it wasn't called a "personal computer" because it turned each person into a computer.
"A common misunderstanding is that GUIs were invented to give ancient computers enough time for processing by slowing down user input speed. However our research shows that counterintuitively input latency was better at the time when GUIs were invented and then gradually got worse..."
> GUI wasn't designed to make computing harder by forcing people to find cryptic little symbols
That was absolutely the result of moving to a 2d-ui: icon spam and little discoverability. I can't say I've ever wanted an icon toolbar when I have a menu right there that's activated by common keystrokes without clogging my screen.
Of course, some people only know "save" as a floppy-disk icon. Good luck raising them the remaining way.
