the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

KNOW “HELPFUL” FROM “ANNOYING” 191
in uninvited, offering advice that was often useless, and refusing to leave
quickly actually made him less anthropomorphic. They concluded: “If
this behavior were that of a human office assistant, then he would eventually
be fired, or at least severely marginalized.”
The unfortunate paper clip did become a trendsetter—though not
the sort Microsoft had intended. Clippy became a prototype victim of the
sort of Internet-speed savaging later directed at politicians and movie
starlets. ZDNet.com, the computer news site, offered a tutorial on how to
eradicate Clippy, and people who posted to Internet discussion boards
trashed the agent. Clippy served as the inspiration for a vast number of
online amateur satirists. One of the funniest created an imitation Clippy,
which offered nonsensical interruptions such as “Your computer seems to
be on” and “It is time to play a game—let’s play hide and seek.” To make
matters worse, ZDNet.com reported in 2000 that a hacker had found a
potential security hole in Clippy that would enable him to attack users’
computers. Microsoft quickly issued a security patch, but by then the revelation
had already added fuel to the anti-Clippy confl agration.
“Useless, Obsolete, and . . . Hideously Unattractive”
In April 2001, Microsoft exiled Clippy to the options selection in its
latest release, Offi ce XP, which had new, improved help features, such as
smart tags and task panes, that Microsoft said made the assistant unneeded.
But Clippy had been so gratingly conspicuous on millions of computer
screens that Microsoft could hardly just abandon it quietly, the way
that Ford had tried to slip the Edsel’s cancellation into an obscure fi nancial
report in 1959. Paradoxically, though Clippy’s purpose had been to
make Microsoft Offi ce simpler to use, New York Times computing writer
John Markoff observed that the annoying paper clip had come to exemplify
the software giant’s overburdening of users with too many features.
So instead, Microsoft opted for one of the most bizarre—yet
successful—promotional gambits in history. To hype its new Clippy-free
release of Office, it joined disgruntled users of the old version in ridiculing