[extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires

[Robin Hanson]

On 11/29/2003 Jacques DP wrote:
>... People bought out of certaine desires and expectations, and in many
>instances, I think they didn't really get the expected benefits.
>In a way, this is true for many consumer items. But it is much more
>severe for computers, for a simple reason: people don't know what PCs
>are, and how information-processing problem should be handled.
>To make their desires and expectations better grounded, they would
>need a computer scientist examining their needs, and advising
>solutions. Instead, they are "informed" by vendors, who sometimes
>simply mislead intentionally, but who more often identify vague
>desires, and cultivate and encourage them when it allows more selling,
>even if the desires are misguided. Some examples include ...
>- Buying new hardware and new software to get wysiwyg word processing,
>   which in the end wastes a lot of time and produces poor results.
>This last example is particulary telling for me, because as I have
>some experience in publishing, ... again and again people spending
>hours to make some document "look good", and then finally thinking
>that after all this work they got a perfect result -- when the result
>is actually terrible, but they don't realize it. ...
>Some LaTeX-inspired solution, ... probably be most effective. ...
>The whole business model of Microsoft follows this principle: just
>give the user what he wants, even if it's a bad idea. When he realizes
>it's a bad idea, we'll sell him something that he perceives as a
>solution. As he's no computer scientist, this can go on, and does go
>on, for decades. ...

I believe your description of the situation with PCs, but let me suggest
that this problem is *not* much more severe with computers - it is
ubiquitous.  You only notice PC problems because you have some expertize
in computing and publishing - you do not notice it in other areas mainly
because you do not have similar levels of expertize there.  This problem
shows up often when customers do not themselves have the expertize to judge
product quality, and where they do not structure their contracts to make
expert pay depend on results.  It shows up in teaching, in medicine,
in news media, in home repair, and so on.

The main ways to reduce this problem are to make pay depend on results,
and to limit the ability of experts to coordinate with each other.
Unfortunately, since customers usually don't see that they have a problem
here, they aren't very interested in such solutions.  And setting up
government regulation doesn't help much, as consumers aren't any better
at choosing and policing regulators than they are at choosing and policing
ordinary producers.

For those who can tolerate math, I've given a general theoretical
description of the problem at:  http://hanson.gmu.edu/expert.pdf



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323