“Go to the bookstore and look at how many bookshelves are filled with books trying to explain how to work the devices. We don't see shelves of books on how to use television sets, telephones, refrigerators or washing machines. Why should we for computer-based applications?”

—  Donald A. Norman

Source: The Invisible Computer (1998), Ch. 10

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Go to the bookstore and look at how many bookshelves are filled with books trying to explain how to work the devices. W…" by Donald A. Norman?
Donald A. Norman photo
Donald A. Norman 29
American academic 1935

Related quotes

Albert Einstein photo

“Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein's reply was "I don't know, why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
William Gibson photo

“On the most basic level, computers in my books are simply a metaphor for human memory: I'm interested in the hows and whys of memory, the ways it defines who and what we are, in how easily memory is subject to revision.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

Interview with Larry McCaffery in Storming the Reality Studio : A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke University Press (December 1991)
Context: On the most basic level, computers in my books are simply a metaphor for human memory: I'm interested in the hows and whys of memory, the ways it defines who and what we are, in how easily memory is subject to revision. When I was writing Neuromancer, it was wonderful to be able to tie a lot of these interests into the computer metaphor. It wasn't until I could finally afford a computer of my own that I found out there's a drive mechanism inside — this little thing that spins around. I'd been expecting an exotic crystalline thing, a cyberspace deck or something, and what I got was a little piece of a Victorian engine that made noises like a scratchy old record player. That noise took away some of the mystique for me; it made computers less sexy. My ignorance had allowed me to romanticize them.

Gerard Batten photo

“Instead of asking the EU how we may leave we should have been explaining to them how we are going to leave.”

Gerard Batten (1954) British politician

UKIP facing 'difficult' local elections - Gerard Batten https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43920556 BBC News (27 April 2018)
2018

Douglas Adams photo

“We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

Virginia Woolf photo

“An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Diary entry on James Joyce's Ulysses (16 August 1922), quoted in Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary (1953; 1965), p. 47

Beverly Cleary photo

“If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.”

Beverly Cleary (1916) American writer of children's books
Mortimer J. Adler photo

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: Connie Robertson (1998). Book of Humorous Quotations. p. 2

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Robert Maynard Hutchins photo

“If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible … it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Yukihiro Matsumoto photo

“Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, "By doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something." They are focusing on machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves.”

Yukihiro Matsumoto (1965) Japanese computer scientist

Yukihiro Matsumoto " The Philosophy of Ruby, A Conversation with Yukihiro Matsumoto, Part I http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby4.html" by Bill Venners on 2003-09-29 (Artima Developer).

Related topics