zlacker

>>sohkam+(OP)
That's an early version of the system. I've seen pictures of a later version, which was an IBM 3270 display with a phone handset, but no keyboard. The idea was that the executive would pick up the phone and be connected to someone in a call center who would then do spreadsheet-type operations for them. Don't know if that was deployed much.

>>Animat+V4
Very prescient! That's pretty much how my execs work with MS Teams and my Excel models - they call me and I manipulate them on the screen for them :-D

>>snthpy+ra
In the early 1990s, I was working on GUI email software. Not much different than the email software at university, just the pixel resolution was higher with GUI.

The dev team went out "into the field" to help roll out the software to the company. This also allowed us to see how others used the software.

At the end of the day, one of the devs reported back that one personal assistant would maximize the email app's window (back when 17" CRT monitors were large) and after each email was processed, she'd print out the email and file it the appropriate spot in a filing cabinet.

All the devs were, "But... But... she can just file the email in an email folder in the program. Why does she need hardcopy? Email was supposed to save trees!"

>>canuck+Qh
Right after graduating college my wife was looking for work and ended up taking a job as a secretary shared between two chairs at our local university. They thought it was super important that their secretary had a bachelors degree for some reason.

One of the chairs would read emails on his iMac, then would handwrite a return message and give it to my wife who would type it into email and send it as him. He didn’t want to type anything. This was around 2008 to give you an idea of timing. My wife didn’t stay for long, but my understanding is he was doing this until he retired sometime in the 20 teens.

>>a2tech+UC
2008. Wow.

But I do remember going back to the 90s that there was at least one senior exec at a computer company I worked for who basically didn't touch his terminal as I understand it. His admin printed out and typed everything.

>>ghaff+kQ
This attitude is still presenet among doctors, and is one reason why electronic Medical Records still suck, and why Obama's "Affordable Care Act" has made American healthcare simultaneously the most expensive in the world as well as among the worst in the world. Doctors consider their time too valuable to be used in slow and fiddly data entry, so they offload it to additional staff.

They're not entirely wrong in this regard - modern EMR web UIs are arguably inferior in many ways to some light pen driven systems of the 1970s-80s (I'm thinking especially of the old TDS system, which nurses (and the few docs that used them) loved because it was so easy and quick - replacing or "upgrading" it was like pulling teeth, and the nurses fought hard to keep it in every case I ever saw.)

>>dublin+mb1
The younger docs seem more amenable but there still seems to be a ton of electronic paperwork for the benefit. That said, my "community hospital" got bought by one of the two big systems in my area and, from a patient standpoint, things like prescriptions and labs especially seem much more automated than in the past.