◼ [VI], “Easy” Data Bases: Another View (Mensa Member Versus InfoStar), page [323].
7
Graphics (or How a Mouse Helped Joe Shelton’s Friends Stop Feeling Like Rats)
When a California executive invited people to his apartment, they often ended up feeling like rats in a laboratory maze.
“I had people driving around for half an hour and find a phone and say, ‘Come on over and get me,’” says Joe Shelton.
In recent years, however, the “hit rate” for finding Joe’s place has jumped from 50 percent to over 95, and computer graphics is the reason.
Joe’s neat little map shows a mile-square area with up to five turns before you even start wending your way through the complex of 150 units. He isn’t an artist. But he uses a Macintosh computer.
With the Mac’s famous “mouse”—the pointer device that Joe rolls along his desk to move the cursor—he can effortlessly make sketches.
Granted, Joe isn’t detached about Mac’s virtues, not as a $50,000-a-year software products manager with Apple Computer! And this particular example is trivial. It’s also, however, irresistible. And the story indeed shows how graphics can ease the life of a corporate manager. People also use computer-drawn maps for, say, directing colleagues to meetings in new places.