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Point · Which? · it targets

Element 12

12●›
Pk
Pick

Say which thing.

click · tap · look-and-pinch

First known

Corrected

1948–49Whirlwind light gun: point at a spot of light and the machine acts on it. Bob Everett, MIT.

See also: SAGE consoles' light gun; English's mouse, c.1964.

The popular first is later. This one comes from a source someone opened. The source.

  • ReadingValue

Specimen № 12a — operate freely

Press it. Keep pressing it.

Fig. 12a — Click

000 readings · idle

Anatomy of Click

  1. 01Arm
    You
    Brings the pointer over the target.
    It
    Shows the target is live: a cursor change, a lift.
  2. 02Press
    You
    Pushes the button down.
    It
    Darkens the target at once. Nothing is committed yet.
  3. 03Hold
    You
    May slide off before letting go.
    It
    Drops the pressed look when the pointer leaves. Leaving cancels.
  4. 04Release
    You
    Lets go inside the target.
    It
    Commits, and shows the result where the person is already looking.

Phases light as the specimen above registers them. The dark ones are the ones it can't sense.

Lineage

Whirlwind's light gun, at MIT around 1949, let an operator point at a dot on the screen to say that one. Engelbart's NLS, shown in 1968, moved the act to the mouse, and Xerox PARC's Alto made a press of its button the default way to say yes.

Descends fromAn origin
Click
Gave rise to

Under delegation

Mutates

  1. Survives
  2. Mutates
  3. Dissolves

With a model on the other side, the click survives as the cheapest possible yes: approve, accept, run it. Its old virtue is now its danger. A click carries nothing but "now", so a click on Allow authorizes whatever the agent meant, not whatever you understood. The design problem moves from making clicks easy to making them legible.

Becomes

Down the Point column

  1. it followsPoPoint
  2. it targetsPkPick
  3. it remembersSeSelect
  4. it connectsMeMention
  5. it guessesThThat
  6. it actsPuPoint out

Read down and Point gets heavier: each step is the same act, on a machine that keeps track of more.

Bodies

The act stays put while the hardware changes. These are some of the forms Pick takes.

  • click
  • tap
  • look-and-pinch

From the 2021 table

These were tiles of their own. On this table each is a form of Pick, and each old address lands here.

  • ClickIsotopeThe same act in another body.Operate ↑
  • TapIsotopeThe same act in another body.Operate ↑
  • TouchHostA device or surface that carries the act.Operate ↑
  • RippleHostA device or surface that carries the act.Operate ↑