Post #4674210 · Elektrine

2026-09-12 01:28 UTC

I say this as someone who has latched onto a cool UNIFYING PRINCIPLE!!1! or ten in my life, and had to get smacked down by friction with reality. That will happen again, I'm not immune, the only thing I've gotten better at is holding those principles with a lighter hand. Up to a point, a skepticism of modes is pretty reasonable and evidentially-supported. A full declared war against modalism is fundamentally wrongheaded in ways that are impossible to reconcile with the world of "existing software that does useful things," and the effort to bridge them will eventually lead to declaring some kind of surrender. Try playing any video game where you can do a variety of in-game actions, where the authors needed to support controllers for consoles. In fact, I'll go for the meme here. "Press F to pay respects", cool cool. Do you want F to be bound to "pay respects" for the whole game? You gonna do a lot of that? No. You want that action to be impossible in a context where respects are sensible to pay? Prolly not!

Replies (1)

@MaddieM4@raphus.social 2026-09-12 01:39

Fundamentally, a *generally* useful computer, AKA for a diverse and extensible set of tasks, needs modality to mediate between the contradictions. It's not negotiable, it's literally table stakes. And we are in greater need for accessible, clear, and contextual software than we've ever been - this is the fight against computing as a media consumption appliance on Corporate America's terms. So yeah, I am not surprised that Archy faded from public memory (and is now no longer even downloadable from RCHI) but the most evil companies are selectively adopting specific advice in dark pattern form. I think Jef Raskin would probably hate that legacy. He's got the vibes of someone who really gave a shit and worked himself ragged in the interests of the users. It's such a pointed cautionary tale to me, because I am too much like Raskin, down to ambition to make highly-accessible radical opinionated experimental GUI systems. imindanger.png

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