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

[JDP]

Emlyn O'regan wrote (28.11.2003/09:06) :

> Jacques wrote:
> 
> > I think this is somewhat paradigmatic of the whole personal computing
> > business from the start. People make wrong judgements regarding real
> > costs and the quality of end results, and choose the individual
> > solution because they like to feel individually empowered.
> > 
> > We got nice results (cheap powerful PCs) from misguided desires. (I
> > wonder what enlightened desires would have brought.)
> 
> I can't see what is wrong with the development of the PC. To me it makes
> perfect sense. Can you please explain your thinking here (I am interested to
> know)? Thanks.


Of course, I don't mean to dismiss the usefulness of the present-day
PC, especially for a certain category of people. And now that PCs are
Internet terminals, this is even more overwhelmingly so.

What I had in mind was the development of PCs (hardware and software)
during the last decades, seen as resulting from an interplay between
individual buyers and software/vendors. 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 (in no order and on different levels):

- Needing to buy four generations of computers to go from Word 2 to
  Word 2000, with no gain in functionality.

- Being tricked in believing that a PC is something easy to manage.
  Then getting lost in hardware interrupts conflicts, or drivers
  installation. Or getting lost in what would normally be the work of
  a sysadmin, and that you need to confront without you knowing it,
  like: implementing a sound backup policy, or handling the security
  for your Internet-DSL-connected system. Something that a simple user
  isn't only unable to do, but also the challenges of which he cannot
  appreciate.

- 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, I know a bit about typesetting (French
typesetting especially, which is a bit different from English
typesetting). I have seen 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.

It's a good example because the fact that the result is terrible
doesn't matter as long as they don't realize it. To be given the power
of having their own small press is very exciting, and they like it.
But they waste time, and they get poor results. In many instances,
like for writing sporadic letters, a typewriter would be fine;
actually a pen would be fine.

Some LaTeX-inspired solution, in which one focus on the content, and
the formatting is taken care of automatically in a professional way,
would probably be most effective. But it is not immediately appealing.
You need someone that you trust to tell you: believe me, even if you
don't see the corners of the page on your screen like in Word, you
will actually produce better-looking documents and in a fraction of
the time you would have needed in Word. But nothing of the kind
(whether in this particular example or in other cases) ever happens in
the dialogue between vendors and buyers. Buyers are attracted to
something, and they are encouraged in these desires, however misled
they can be. Then, maybe 3 years down the road the users hit the
problem that would have been obvious from the start to a computer
scientist. That is fine for the vendor: they can now sell a new
solution that solves *that* problems -- and that creates other ones,
which they will address in the next version, etc.

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.

Of course, from our extropian point of view, we are tempted to bless
it all, because it sustains Moore's law, and we need some more cycles
of that to get AI.

Jacques