Table of Contents

ider the WordWindow

In the 1980s, computer adventure games became possible thanks to a piece of code known as a “parser”. The computer would understand and obey your command if you typed “pick up the Axe”. Italics was used because the computer didn’t understand your words and simply broke them into pieces. This changed your inventory.

Many people, when faced with a basic parser, did the homunculus trick and assumed that the computer would understand everything you typed, such as, “I think having an axe on my inventory will be useful,” or “let me tell about my cousin …”

I was fortunate enough to work with Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and other great authors. Early on, we discovered that the parser wasn’t as powerful as everyone thought.

It sounds a lot like LLM or ChatGPT forty years after.

It was a simple and convenient solution, which almost always solves a confusion problem.

The WordWindow (tm) buttons was created. It seems that the trademark symbol was added to make it more powerful.

You can type 25 of the most useful or common things.

This is a bridge that I believe will be powerful even right now. A “Summarize button” will leverage ChatGPT strengths, but not be something that people would immediately use.

If you want to broaden this concept, you can offer multiple choices to people who seem to be confused or hesitant.

Menus are useful. Menus work even when we are not in a restaurant.

Seth Godin
Author: Seth Godin

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