6.5M views · Feb 26, 2007 · 2:45 · 0 HN recommenders · 5 mentions · discussed 2009–2024
A classic Norwegian TV comedy sketch from NRK's show Oystein og jeg, subtitled in English, in which a monk calls a helpdesk to learn how to use a book instead of a scroll.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN drops it as a joke whenever threads touch on new interfaces, books or technology confusing users.
“their "pretty" url is much longer than the original one.”
thats a remarkable service. They take this ugly url: this video [38 characters] and turn it into this pretty url: link [47 characters] their "pretty" url is much longer than the original one. What the hell!?
“requires a link to this classic clip from Øystein og jeg”
I'm on the "dead trees or their equivalent forever" side myself (search doesn't work well with paraphrases, and the physical book has more physical cues for random retrieval of imperfectly remembered passages), but "the 'flip pages with your finger' UI has proved immensely durable" requires a link to this classic clip from Øystein og jeg : this video
“Books were not without their difficulties, however”
Pages were superior because: 1. Scrolls were more difficult to handle as you read. 2. You could jump around to various places in a long book document, but with a scroll you had to manually unravel it to the point you were looking for, a time consuming process. 3. Books were not without their difficulties, however: this video But in all seriousness, the scroll concept works perfectly well, in fact better than the book concept, provided you have the right technology to drive it. And modern computers have that technology. I can use a search box to jump to wherever I want. I can quickly scroll up and down in the document using a scroll bar rather than paging through a book.
“Medieval helpdesk”
> reading books Not sure how much currency this has lately, but back at the dawn of Web 2.0, this was well-known comedy. Relates 'books' to 'tech'. Medieval helpdesk: this video
“Also relevant”
When Gutenberg asked people what they thought of his printing press, they replied that it lacked the soul of a hand-copied book and they would never buy a book printed on it. Also relevant: this video
