Same thought, different time

It seems to me that people are either in the business of finding differences or similarities. I'm more fascinated by similarities since I believe they say something profound about reality that descriptions of differences seldom catch; to generalize a little, science and philosophy is about finding underlying principles, and these principles are to be applied universally.

One new favorite of mine is this example from a famous Chinese poem by Wang Wei (王维):

獨在異鄉為異客

Character by character it could be literally interpreted as "alone in strange land as strange guest" although a more flowing translation would be "a lone stranger in a strange land." I'm aware that the translation of King James' Bible that has that famous saying is an interpretation that might not be supported by the original text, but I find it fascinating that the same idea has been individually reached like this.

All that's left after smart phones...

...is good UI on other machines.

I find it amazing that some of the most complex things in existence, personal computers and smart phones, are supposed to be easy to use, whereas things like copy machines present arcane interfaces for much simpler functionality. Today I attempted to scan some stuff at the business center in my residential area. I'm probably dumb since I didn't manage to get anything across despite typing my email address correctly on a numerical keypad for more than 10 times. Why, though, do you have to be smarter with a thing like this than a computer?