dacs.doc electric

Let’s get the message out right up front. The computer is the greatest toy ever invented. That’s the only way to make any sense out of this loony business of ours.

Way back in history, when we wanted to make computer power available to more people, we did it with dumb terminals attached to a mainframe run by a time-sharing operating system. This made the entire computer available to each user in a round robin fashion. Although each time slice was only a few milliseconds, the user felt it was all his.

Now if there was any logic, or even just plain common sense in our business, that is the way we should have continued. Professional systems people would tend the operating system, technicians would tend the hardware, systems analysts would cope with functional capability, and professional help would always be available. The users would be free to just run the apps and turn out the good work.

But a funny thing happened along the way. Crude, rudimentary, individual boxes with quirky, buggy, poorly documented software appeared on desktops. The user had to learn operating systems and hardware maintenance and all the other things that the professional staff previously did. So much time was spent just trying to get the thing going that getting useful work done became secondary. Unrecorded, unreported and unmentionable time was burned by users baffled, but undaunted, by hardware and software problems.

Why did users en masse abandon what was clearly the more practical solution to spend an unimaginable amount of their time struggling with what they had no background, training or even interest in doing?

Only one reason. That cantankerous, frustrating, box on their desk was their very own, all theirs to do with as they pleased, no sharing needed.

To better understand all this, we must watch a four year old playing with his or her toys. The toy is all his or hers. No interference from siblings, friends or parents. No sharing. It is used, as the four year old wants to use it, not as parents think it should be used. An emotional bond is established (and later abandoned) purely on four-year-old logic, parental wisdom not required. When the four year old is playing with the toy, he or she is concentrated, manipulative, and serious; oblivious to the outside world. There is very seldom any laughing or smiles. Playing is serious business. Playing is interacting with the toy, doing something that causes the toy to entertain.

The traditional design goals in the computer industry have been to make PCs (1) cheaper, (2) faster, (3) more stable, (4) easier to use, and (5) with more features.

All wrong. Conventional wisdom. Big business marketing execs are just not paying attention. Microsoft’s know-it-all Bob and contorting paper clips missed the mark completely because they intruded into the users space and seemed to control the machine. Wizards are barely more acceptable, but only because they can be summoned and dismissed at will.

What the user really wants is (1) exclusive control, no sharing, (2) interactive, indulgent apps (Solitaire, games, etc.), (3) recovery from trouble; users are as tolerant of system crashes as they are of their own blunders if only they know they can recover somehow, (4) an illusion of getting a good price (the one adult shtick here), (5) and most important, the means to arrange things to their own liking.

So if the PC looks like a toy, has all the characteristics of a toy, and is treated like a toy, by golly, it must be a toy. But when we look at all that is being done with computers, we must upgrade that to “the greatest toy”.

Any system house that recognized that they are really making toys for users with four-year-olds’ attitudes would be spectacularly successful. Of course, they could never advertise it as such, or ever admit it, but users would find all sorts of rationalizations to make it correct. Like all the really important matters of life and death, it would be an unmentionable except by the iconoclasts whom we would rather ignore. The design goals would now be maximum identity with the user, personalized touches that come from the user.

Would an advanced networked, main frame based, time sharing system be able to support today’s applications better than individual PCs? Absolutely. Would it have succeeded in getting millions and millions of people to use computers? Absolutely not.

So what is the future? Moore’s Law is still valid, and five years will bring a ten-fold increase in capability. Users who could care less about a ten-fold better spread sheet, would pay big for a ten-fold improvement in computer generated environments which are individualized, participatory, and immersive. Why? Because it fulfills all the basic elements of the toy.