WYSIWYG 1970

WYSIWYG is the abbreviation for What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get. It is a concept developed at Xerox PARC; it means that the display on screen corresponds to the printed sheet of paper – a quite radical idea in the early days of desktop computing.  According to Wikipedia the expression was “coined by John Seybold and popularized at Xerox PARC during the late 1970s.” – According to Alan Kay it was Charles Simony, who introduced the term.

Therefore it is quite stunning to hear the words in a totally different context. Tim Rice used the very same phrase for a chorus in Jesus Christ Superstar (music Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1970) in the piece The Temple.

what you see is what you get

Score of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Temple

Quite possible that John Seybold knew the song.

[Update 26-Apr-2017] I do not what to push this over the edge, but the following lines are kind of intriguing as well, once you switch the context back to computing:

No-one’s been disappointed yet – success rate, ease of use
Don’t be scared give me a try –  familiarity, robustness, undo, user experience
There is no-thing you can’t buy – Business goals; revenue comes from happy customers

[Update 29-Dec-2018] Alan Kay: What exactly is WYSIWYG?

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