Clippy.JS - Add Clippy and friends to any website
I had a lot more fun playing with this Clippy than I thought I would.  I remember HATING Clippy and now I'm questioning why I did.<p>The only conclusion I can make is that it wasn't the actual character and its animations that I hated.  They are, if I'm being honest with myself, kind of cute and endearing.  The reason I hated Clippy was that it was <i>condescending</i>.<p>"I see you're trying to write a letter.  Would you like me to help you with that?"<p>Hindsight is 20/20, but Microsoft should have realized there's no way to phrase that and not insult the intelligence of 90% of your users.<p>Interestingly, I see an analogy here with today's GPS software.  No matter how nice they make the voice sound, they never fail to sound condescending when you veer from the pre-calculated route.  I love MotionX GPS Drive for the iPhone (other than the fact that it crashes every time I go to another app), but the default voice manages to make me physically angry every time she says "Rerouting".  You can almost hear the disappointing frown on her face, as if she's saying "<i>sigh</i> I guess I'm going to have to plot a new course since you're obviously not smart enough to stay on the one I made for you."<p>How hard would it be to make a GPS system that just assumed I might want to get gas or stop for a bite to eat if I took an unplanned exit off an interstate with hundreds of miles to go on my journey?<p>I think Clippy and rude nav systems are different manifestations of the same problem.  It's a kind of "uncanny valley of human-computer interaction", although here the revulsion is not triggered by looks or movement but by BEHAVIOR.  It's behavior that is almost, but not quite, human.  Specifically, I think it's triggered when a computer system takes a tone of intellectual superiority over its user.<p>Because most of us know that our technology is nowhere near the level of intelligence needed to actually be wiser than we are, we feel the same kind of indignation and resentment at the posturing of the system as we do when a small child insists that we don't know what we're talking about while answering their question about why the sky is blue.