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GELERNTER: Candy-Coated Electronics and a reply (reply first , article after)
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 19:39:13 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: "Bob Frankston" <Bobf-xix () bobf frankston com> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 17:09:41 -0400 To: "'John F. McMullen'" <observer () westnet com>, "'johnmac's living room'" <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com> Cc: "'Dave Farber'" <farber () cis upenn edu>, "'Declan McCullagh'" <declan () well com>, "David S Isenberg" <isen () isen com> Subject: RE: GELERNTER: Candy-Coated Electronics There's a basic fallacy here -- confusing the operating system and other mechanisms with applications. It's fine for Gelernter to offer his solutions as a competing application in the marketplaces. But when he claims that it is in place of more basic mechanisms I worry. The economic argument is backwards. Making computers do one application very well at the cost of flexibility and opportunity decreases their value and the economic contribution of computing. Instead of making the computer act as a better x, it is far more valuable to give the user the power to make the computer do x -- only a few will create a new and valuable x but because anyone can, those who do find a new application can share it. It's the old stupid nets argument but this time it's about stupid computers that give us the choices vs very smart computers that do one thing brilliantly. That is, if that's the one thing to do. There is a false dichotomy and naiveté in "Users don't need a raft of special-purpose applications; they need one simple, versatile one. No one has time to keep learning new programs." There are various tools appropriate for different people and a balance between specialization and general purpose tools but, ultimately, the question is who can add value and whether there is the one true application that does it all and does it without us having to learn or think or be allowed to change. I've seen Gerlenter demo his app and I have no problem with his claiming that it is a good tool for organization ones scraps of information and I can even accept the hubris of claiming it's a "must have" application -- that¹s normal marketing. What I don't understand is the leap from "useful tool" to the "one true answer to all problems". I worry about it in the same way I worried about Mike Dertouzos call for computers to be smarter than we are. Microsoft's Intellisense is a mild form of this but, at least, the marketplace has not show universal appreciation for the clippie. -----Original Message----- From: John F. McMullen [mailto:observer () westnet com] Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 13:56 To: johnmac's living room Cc: Dave Farber; Declan McCullagh (johnmac -- In addition to the identification of David Gelernter as a Yale computer science professor and chief scientist at Scopeware.com, it should be noted that he was targeted and permanently injured by the UniBomber) Candy-Coated Electronics By DAVID GELERNTER The U.S. economy has been working from a script that said "pause here until Iraq has been liberated." The pause is nearly over, so it's a good time to face up to the postwar state of the world. The technology sector is crucial to the economy, and personal computers to the tech sector -- and consumers and businesses no longer replace their PCs on cue. The U.S. computer industry will either deal with this fact or come screeching to a traumatic halt soon. Five years ago we were flooded with information; now we're drowning. Meanwhile, the distance between evolving hardware and the same old software has become a crisis. The industry suffers from a software gap that could change its nature and choke off the cash flow that underwrites its future. Consider the PC conundrum: Core information-management has been stuck since Microsoft released Windows 3.0 in 1990; only the browser is new since then -- depending on your definition of "new." Browsers were revolutionary, but they don't help me manage the information on my own machine. PC sales are bad because new PCs offer no value added over old ones. By and large, a new PC won't do anything important that your old PC can't do just as well. Indeed, the only company thriving at the moment is Dell -- which recently announced unexpectedly strong sales projections. The market was thrilled. But Dell isn't tapping new markets, it is only taking sales from higher-cost makers. Once it has polished off everyone else's business, what then? No one wants a new operating system -- in the future, a new approach to core information management will be laid down smoothly over existing software. Existing files, e-mails and what-all will be unchanged but they will be arranged better and be easier to find and use. The files stay, the file system goes (or at any rate, vanishes). We have the books; we need a new bookshelf. This sounds like a casual metaphor, but goes to the center of the problem. Today's standard file system was born in the '70s -- never intended for 21st-century demands. Nowadays it is hopelessly outclassed. The desktop interface (that pint-sized parking lot for icons) is in tough shape too. So we have search engines and finder programs and document managers and other specialized applications, operating like counter clerks at an ancient library where the books are all hidden on collapsing shelves in the back. But counter clerks are no answer. All the important design requirements apply to the bookshelf itself -- to the basic architecture of information storage. We need unity and simplicity. Today's standard systems offer clutter and complexity. But the days of information stashed in caves all over the cyberlandscape (in the mailer, browser, file system, photo album. . .) are over. Users don't need a raft of special-purpose applications; they need one simple, versatile one. No one has time to keep learning new programs. People forget how to work applications they don't use constantly. And new software should pass the three-minute test: if you can't get the gist in three minutes, forget it. When users cram their screens full of icons or their e-mail full of everything, they are telling the industry something: Who needs a desktop and a file system? A mailer and a document manager? We desperately need a structure that brings to bear visual sense. The new system and its onscreen picture must let you browse -- not the way you browse the Web; the way you browse a supermarket or newsstand. You see lots of things at once, and hone in on what you want. Sophisticated visual browsing is essential to information management because you don't always know exactly what you're looking for; or you know where it is, or can recognize it, but not describe it. And you need context to make sense of things. Information should be arranged to mirror your life, not your computer. Today's information systems are candy-coated electronics. Worrying about C and D drives was OK in the '80s, but today information should take the shape of your life. Electronic documents should be arranged in time-order. And the stream must be able to scale up smoothly and expand as you add information over a lifetime. Onscreen, the information system looks like a column of index cards seen from above and in front. The future on your right, marching towards you; the past on your left, moving away. The future holds appointments and reminders, plus copies of any mail or documents you've kicked forward to deal with later. To cope with the ever-increasing info-onslaught, you must be able to position documents in your own future as deliberately as you move chessmen forward. * * * Two basic problems afflict modern intellectual life in many fields: Many (probably most) of us think in pictures, but we tend to be no good at describing pictures or designing machines that make good use of our visual capacities. And we tend to complexify our way out of problems instead of simplifying our way out. Today's standard information-management software is no good for exactly those reasons. I'm not a neutral observer, and I practice what I preach. But the company I helped found is not the only one to have noticed the software gap and the collapse of old-style information management. Microsoft is working on its new Longhorn operating system; according to Bill Gates, "The one question we're trying to solve with Longhorn is, 'Where's my stuff?'" Intel keeps making its chips more powerful, but knows that everyday software must find something to do with these powerful new chips or they will go nowhere. The narrative information structure is an information beam you focus rather than search, "tune in" rather than fire up; it works like human recall. Will users like it? Many do, but our desktop software is new (and one version is free), so it's too early to say. Remember, though: Users are far less reactionary than the industry. Your software (no matter how radical) succeeds if it is simpler and more powerful, takes three minutes to learn and gets the onscreen picture right. When information management starts, at last, to move forward again, it will pull the technology world with it. Mr. Gelernter, a Yale computer science professor, is chief scientist at Scopeware.com. Copyright 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The 'johnmacsgroup' Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson "Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" - Pierre Abelard "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke John F. McMullen johnmac () acm org johnmac () cyberspace org ICQ: 4368412 AIM & Yahoo Messenger: johnmac13 http://www.westnet.com/~observer ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- GELERNTER: Candy-Coated Electronics and a reply (reply first , article after) Dave Farber (Apr 15)