Seems like some aspects of the experiment survived and were hugely popular: folders, clipboard, cut, paste, etc..
You don’t open a file, you “walk” to a “filing cabinet”, “pull the drawer out”, and “reach in and pull out a specific piece of ‘paper’”.
You don’t make a phone call, you sit in virtual meeting space with virtual bodies while wearing a mocap suit.
Does anyone still remember why we got computers in the first place?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FGzE4endQ
(2015, so 4 years before Zuckerberg committed to the Metaverse enough to rename the whole company, and still 1 year before the first commercial new generation VR headset : Oculus Rift released.)
Uhhhh, to play videogames?
(That was the Beavis 'n Butthead voice.)
Rather that these metaphors were very present in 2000s Windows and Office programs, and were very successful in getting regular users to understand computers and bringing about the Personal Computer revolution.
I remember encountering them in an old Xerox system, in the early 1980s.
Bob was awful. However, I have to confess that I once tried designing UI like that, and learned painful lessons, in the process.
And what were the metaphors specifically, folders or cutting and pasting?
Thanks.
It had folders, a mouse, document icons, and a trash can.
I can't really remember much else. It was B&W.