A former employee of Bill Gates says the Microsoft leader wanted all user interfaces always to be exactly the same, which led to an awkward exchange

At one particularly frustrating moment, I offered the following: “Bill, a shower, a toilet, and a water fountain all have mechanisms to control water flow, places where the water comes out, some sort of porcelain basin to hold the water, and a drain, but we don’t combine them into one thing to reduce their learning curve. We don’t merge them into one object because each of them are in use in fundamentally different ways at different times.”

Then the pause.

Then Bill’s verdict. [There was an almost interminable pause in the conversation, as Bill thought about what I had said. And then he looked up at me after some processing and exclaimed: ‘That’s just rude.’]

Ouch.

As I saw my career disintegrate before me, I started to question just how “beautiful” my analogy really was.

So I guess now we know why today so many people sh*t on Windows.

But seriously, I am reminded of all the use-cases where we have similar but not the same interface. Motorcycles and cars, for example, are similar within the group but not the same as each other.

As much as a unified interface has some advantages, it certainly doesn’t lead to innovation/competition.

I’m not bothered that I have to ride a road bike differently than a mountain bike, or sail a catamaran differently than a mono-hull…this story also suggests it’s always a good idea to go to the bathroom before having an important meeting to ensure analogies do not go where the mind may already be.

A dramatic look at the history of bicycles can be found in an excerpt from Victorian Cycles, Wheels of Change. It is particularly interesting to see the emphasis on safety (versus horses).

…this controversial machine forged roads into society that revolutionized politics, fashion, and social policy as well as paved the way for the mechanized world of motion to come. Victorian Cycles, Wheels of Change is a fascinating documentary about the bicycles coming of age and its tremendous impact on society.

I suspect the growth in numbers of women who rode bicycles had more to do with the cost of horses and the inability of women to operate and own them without assistance than the need to protect women from harm. In other words, if women were able to independently earn wages to afford the lifestyle of a horse-owner then they would have been less likely to need or want to try to adapt to the new and unknown risks of bicycles.

The simple economics of transportation make horses a no-go option to any low-income group. And that is not to mention the many other drawbacks of horses; it was said in the 1800s that New York could be smelled from a hundred miles away. No one ever complained about the urban odour of bicycles.

Ok, so maybe some men really didn’t want to allow their women to ride horses for fear of injury. That perspective just seems slightly off to me, however, given the other high-risk tasks that women were “allowed” at the time.

Working conditions for women, as well as for children, were awful and exposed them to life-threatening dangers (as depicted in Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South; Life of Charlotte Bronte, Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil, etc.) . Many lived tortured lives and suffered greatly during industrialisation.

The NYT gives an interesting example of how identity fits with memory in an interview of Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Dr. Kandel:

So what’s the biggest problem in psychoanalysis? It’s memory!

What does he mean? Take his own memory as an example. His Nazi neighbours in Austria forced him to change his identity as a young boy.

I was 8 ½. Immediately, we saw that our lives were in danger. We were completely abandoned by our non-Jewish friends and neighbors. No one spoke to me in school. One boy walked up to me and said, “My father said I’m not to speak to you anymore.” When we went to the park, we were roughed up. Then, on Nov. 9, 1938, Kristallnacht, we were booted out of our apartment, which was looted. We knew we had to get out.

Then, when awarded a Nobel prize, his childhood memories blocked him from accepting Austrian efforts to give his identity back (or to claim his prize as their own).

Their newspaper people said, “Oh, wonderful, another Austrian Nobel Prize!” I said: “You’ve got this wrong. This is an American, an American Jewish Nobel Prize.” The president of Austria wrote me a note: “What can we do to recognize you?” I said, “I do not need any more recognition, but it would it be nice to have a symposium at the University of Vienna on the response of Austria to National Socialism.” He said, “That’s fine.” I’m very close to Fritz Stern, the historian, and he helped me put the symposium together. Ultimately, a book came out of it. It had a modest impact.

Insertion of memories is apparently easier than removal. Yet at the end of it all he indicates he does not approve of removing bad memories.

To go into your head and pluck out a memory of an unfortunate love experience, that’s a bad idea. You know, in the end, we are who we are. We’re all part of what we’ve experienced. Would I have liked to have had the Viennese experience removed from me? No! And it was horrible. But it shapes you.