This language will bring anywhere

Modern navigation systems are an impressive example of what computer scientists call a “system with a friendly interface”. The author of these lines, for the first time sat behind the wheel of an unfamiliar car, who discovered some strange screen on the dashboard and guessed that this was nothing more than a satellite “Lotsman” monitor, took exactly ten amazing devices. Everything is extremely simple. When starting the engine, the system offers, driving a tiny joystick, select the “communication” language, then inform the destination: you can find it in your own list, independently listed in the computer’s memory, or you can indicate using the cursor - either “printing” on the virtual key shown on the screen, or by “poked” directly to the right place on the map. Such a item may be the exact address of a certain structure (indicating the city, street, house numbers), or maybe a specific volume of the Sectic, selected in a very extensive database (hotel, restaurant, station, hospital, maintenance station, some kind of attraction like a museum, cathedral, monument). After pressing the “Entering” button, the system spends a few seconds to determine your exact location at the time of “Start” and calculate the optimal path to the “finish”. At the same time, she takes into account a variety of “additional wishes” that you can also ask: do you want to visit some intermediate points on the way, do you intend to go the shortest and fastest road or prefer to save, avoiding paid auto tracks, and so on. and so on.

Finally, the monitor is divided in two: on the left, a fragment of a card that is very similar to the usual one is from the atlas of roads, but with an arbitrarily changed scale (from 100 m to 16 km in a centimeter of the screen), with a high-blue road, which you are in the present moment, and with a bright triangle crawling along it, indicating your exact location; On the right is the scheme of the nearest turn, which you need to not miss. A pleasant female voice from the speakers of the stereo system in the language you have chosen and with the volume you have chosen will inform you how to go before this turn, then warn about its approach first for 2 kilometers, then 400 meters and finally at the very moment when it is time to twist the steering wheel. For example, "at the end of the street, hold on to the left side and turn in the second on the left of the lane" or "on the nearest circular interchange, count the third exit and turn right." As soon as you followed the next recommendations of the Electronic Sturman, the next upcoming turn appears on the screen and you hear comments on its passage. The car is mistaken instantly recount the route and indicate how to return to the right path.

Assessing his own experience of communication with such an “inner voice from under the hood”, we note that the driver has to go through several stages in relationships with a newly-minted fellow traveler in a short time, each time overcoming quite tangible psychological barriers. At first, you are completely shocked and fascinated by the capabilities of the navigator and regularly catch yourself on the fact that you drive a car, resting your gaze into the screen and completely ignoring what is happening around. Then you are overwhelmed with the admiration of the wisdom and prudence of this woman, speaking as if directly from the sky, and you enthusiastically Bor “Moscow Vedomosti” in a letter to the Paris Academy Mr. Gram Belle explains the way to reduce the danger and pain when it is possible to make a bullet from the body. It happens very often that the bullet is not in the place where the incision is made, and it has to be sought in another. Belle suggests introducing into the body, where they suggest a bullet, an extremely thin needle. It is connected by the outer end with the phone, which the surgeon holds by the ear. The other end is connected by means of a metal plate with the body of the patient. When the tip of the needle is touched to the bullet, an electric current occurs from the lead and metal plate, which runs along the telephone spiral, and every time a quiet rustle is heard in it, when the needle touches the bullet. The surgeon can then make a cut with the full confidence. June 20, 1882