The View from 2005: Computers have gotten A LOT better since 1995! However, we need to put this in perspective. Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Spritual Machine charcterizes the intelligence in a typical computer, in 1999, as the intelligence of an insect. By 2010, he opines, a typical computer will have the brain of a rodent. An interesting and useful perspective! Half way between a mosquite and a rat. Hmmmm . . .

In 1995, there were just the glimmerings of some sort of primitive intelligence (plankton, perhps?). Our computers sucked. No two ways about it.

In 2005, things are, as I said, much better. However, much of what I wrote then still holds and, I think, is still worth reading. We don’t have to worry about INIT conflicts much anymore, but we do have to worry about viruses, spyware and the refusal of the Internet to respect our desire for pivacy (go ahead, try disabling cookies and see how far you get!). Computers continue to crash, data continues to disappear, and computer hell has simply become a little more sophisticated and vicious, if also less prevalent.

Meanwhile, the section I wrote on the cost of time has become a very important part of my worldview about life and work, and I use it and have refined it a lot since then. I think it (the cost of an “earned” discretionary hour) is one of the more important ideas I’ve had. I calculate it for myself routinely (for 2005 to date, it is $115 per hour for me – yikes!). I suggest you might try calculating it for yourself. You might find it very helpful.

“Special Instructions”

Recently I read an article by Peter Egan in Road & Track magazine that dealt with Special Instructions, which were, he said, the idiosyncratic instructions that accumulate about each mechanical thing, as in “Ya Gotta Hit The Car Door Just Below The Rub Rail To Get It To Close On Wet Mornings” and “Hold The Chainsaw Upside Down For At Least A Second Before You Try To Restart It.” Sometimes, manufacturers institutionalize Special Instructions and they become famous (“The Ignition Key Slot Is On The Floor” – Saab) or even legendary (“Push The Little Button On The Firewall Every 150 Miles With Your Left Foot To Lubricate the Front Suspension” – Morgan).

Truth is, everything that humans build seems to have Special Instructions from the outset, and the Special Instruction Set for any given device or system seems to grow with its age. As Egan mused, “I had no way of knowing that Pa Kettle’s radio was symbolic of the way nearly everything mechanical and electrical would work for the rest of my life.”

Computers, of course, have Special Instructions with a vengeance (“Close All Your Files And Applications Before You Turn Off The Computer” and “Always Turn On The External Drives Before You Turn On The Computer” are mundane examples). At the same time, computers, in their chameleon-like way, reflect our individual neuroses and lunacy. Or as Pogo might say these days, “We have met computers and they is us.” The combination of these two things highlight a growing problem in dataland.

One Size Fits All?

We’ve all gotten ads, tucked in with our Sunday Comics, that tout some kind of general purpose tool. “Miracle Breakthrough!” it starts. “Replace your entire workshop with the WonderTool SXT-9®. It does everything you’ve ever needed to do in one tenth the time for one hundredth of the cost. It’s a band saw, a lathe, a driveway paver, 32 different pairs of pliers, 19 different hammers, a well-driller, a corn planter, a nuclear waste disposal, it’ll build you a rec room, enhance your sexuality and cut your taxes. If bought separately everything’d cost $2.3 Million, but now you can get it for $2,299!!!”

Naturally we have our doubts, There may be 32 types of pliers, but are any of them any good? We’ve learned to ask the professional carpenter or contractor what he thinks, and we usually get back a startled sort of shrug: “Jeez, I dunno. I got a couple of good pairs of pliers. Seems a little pricey to me, like I’m paying for a bunch of stuff I don’t really need.” So, we’ve come to be suspicious of “one-size-fits-all” kinds of products. Too often they turn out to be barely adequate for any of us and ideal for none. But when it comes to computers, we’ve set aside this suspicion. It makes you wonder: have we lost our cottonpicking minds?

There’s good reason for thinking of computers as “one-size-fits-all,” because a central element of their character is the way they have separated form from function, pulling the cerebral aspects of work apart from the physical ones. Used to be, you wrote an article like this by writing it longhand. Then you’d edit it by hand, and copy it by hand to get a finished version, and then you’d send a carbon (remember them?) to Nick and he’d edit it and make yet another copy by hand which’d get cut up and laid out in the galleys, and then they’d finally print the sucker. Your work surface was the paper itself, and you’d keep changing the piece of paper by making successive copies until you got it right, which was a giant pain. The computer replaces the pieces of paper with a “virtual” work surface, the monitor screen, so you write and edit using this screen, ship a copy of the magnetic memory of your work to Nick, he screws around with it, sends it to the printer, and only then is it converted to text on paper.

This by itself would be no big deal, except that the machinery used (the computer, its keyboard and its screen) can be used equally well and approximately simultaneously for other things, like music, arithmetic, graphics, tax preparation, games, planning, etc., depending on the instructions you give it. And this is what software is: instructions. Special Instructions.

So, the physical computer is a virtual tool set whose function varies in response to the Special Instructions operating it. It really IS a WonderTool SXT-9®. However, it has two huge limitations that are easy to lose sight of while you are busy being dazzled by its antics.

First, it is only a “virtual” tool, and in order to do “real” work it is dependent on good physical interfaces (which are usually both hard to build and expensive) – the various A/D/A audio converters are excellent examples.

Second, all Special Instructions are written by humans. As all humans are neurotic to varying degrees, it is fair to say all Special Instructions are written by neurotics. Unfortunately, it shows. Fact is, it gets seriously annoying when you get a lot of different neurotics running your computer at the same time, as the computer begins to act a little like one of those unfortunate people with multiple personalities, each squabbling and fighting for control of its operating system.

And this is the nub of the problem. We want and expect our computer to do everything. It’s so damn versatile, we can’t resist trying to take advantage of its versatility. We want to use it as a fax machine, a bookkeeper, a calendar, a sequencer, a recorder, a draftsman’s table, a typewriter, etc. This is called “multitasking.” It is the siren call of the computer, not only because it allows us to have a single tool that does everything, but also because it promises that everything will be able to interconnect with everything else (“Here, let me plug my sequencer into the modem to receive your tracks, while the accounting program calculates your bill and refigures my taxes, SMPTE syncs the tracks up to the video from Bob, the calendar takes this modem transmission off the “To-Do” list, and I edit this article.”).