Greetings from… Sponsored by:The Greek Islands Restaurant

3821 Center St.Omaha

Nebraska Football!

NGo B

ig Blue!

Tailgate Parties!

And then, the Big Game!

Typical Nebraska Food!

Runza!

Hot Pockets!

Old West Heritage!Old West Heritage!

What’s Wrong With This Information?

Obsolete Biased Commercially-driven Screened for:

• Price

• Accessibility

• Etc.

Sensorial Interfaces

Provide an “easy” way to get information—albeit limited information—about the world.• Disneyland

• Windows

• Oriental Chicken McNuggets

• Sedona…

Kokopelli

Sedona

Sedona Vortex

Freaky Vortex Stuff

Crystals

Why Do We Rely on Interfaces?

Why Do We Rely on Interfaces?

Because understanding and making our own decisions is hard.

It takes too much time. There is too much information out there

—we all have to make decisions about what to learn about.

The Time Machine

One way to tell the story:

The Time Machine

Another way to tell the story:

But Who Has the Power?

But Who Has the Power?

“Morlocks” decide:• what people know

• what people believe

• what people understand

Meteorology Morlocks

Well, you can decide who these people are and what these people do.

Meteorology Eloi

Well, you can decide who these people are and what these people do.

What Does This Tell Us About Computers?

We all have to make decisions about what we are and are not going to understand deeply.

Word Processing

MS Word is easy—• You don’t have to

know ANYTHING about creation of documents to make pretty good looking stuff.

• Is this how professionals create documents?

LaTeX (lay TECH)

For typesetting fancy technical documents.

FrameMaker

For brochures, posters, etc.

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

For professional image processing

So Why Do We All Use Word?

So Why Do We All Use Word?

Because it is easy. Because it does things we need to do

well enough to get by. We’re not professional typesetters.

Good Enough

What does this say about what kind of meteorological software we should be using?

• If you are not a professional, who is?