Something else that wasn't written by me.

[cosmolinguist]

comradexavier has been telling me this kind of thing for months now (only without the Matrix metaphor--that's not his style--though it may have helped his case ... ). Recently, I have even started to believe it.


Smash the Windows

To be truly free in the 21st century, we have to ignore the flashy graphics and really get inside our computers

Dylan Evans
Thursday November 6, 2003
The Guardian

In the west, at least, illiteracy is practically a thing of the past. That's just as well, since it is difficult to survive, and virtually impossible to prosper, in today's world without the ability to read and write. There is another kind of illiteracy, however, as widespread as the old kind used to be: computer illiteracy. Even in the most advanced countries in the world, the vast majority of people are still unable to read or write any kind of computer language.

Sure, most of us can use computers these days. We know how to send email, surf the web or write a letter in Word. But would you know what to do if all those pretty little icons in your browser disappeared and, instead of Windows, you were left staring at lines of letters and numbers of HTML, the language in which web pages are written? If, like Neo in The Matrix, you could see the code behind the graphics?

If your answer is "no", then you are in the majority - one of the many millions of peasants in the technological middle ages. Like most humans in The Matrix, who believe they are living a normal life when in fact their bodies lie inert in a vast complex of pods, you are asleep, a prisoner of your ignorance. And the only way to escape is by getting to grips with the machines, by learning their language. If you don't get inside them, they will get inside you. Adapt or die.

Things can only get worse. As our society becomes ever more dependent on information technology, the gulf between those who understand computers and those who don't will get wider and wider. In 50 years, perhaps much less, the ability to read and write code will be as essential for professionals of every stripe as the ability to read and write a human language is today. If your children's children can't speak the language of the machines, they will have to get a manual job - if there are any left.

This is yet another reason why Windows is such a dangerous commodity. It lulls us into the pernicious illusion that we can deal with computers without adapting to their logic. By presenting us with colourful screens and buttons for us to click on, Microsoft encourages us to believe that we can force computers to adapt entirely to our preferences for visual images, without having to adapt ourselves to their preference for text.

But not only does this prevent people from getting inside the machine and keep them in a state of blissful ignorance, it also proves to be a deceit, for in the end the user still has to adapt to the machine anyway.

We wait, a captive audience, while the browser painstakingly loads the next image-stuffed web page, or we click through menu after menu until we eventually realise that we are not in control after all. The Windows control us.

Paradoxically, it is only by learning the language of the machines, by adapting to their logic, that we can free ourselves from their dominion. It is only by seeming to go backwards, to the way we interacted with computers before Windows came along, that we can go forwards. Remember DOS or the ZX-80, or the old BBC computer? Not much in the way of fancy graphics. Just lots of text, and strange words like DIR and CD.

Isn't this too much of a burden for the average computer user? Shouldn't we try to force computers to adapt to us as much as possible by giving them user-friendly interfaces and hiding their internal workings? Shouldn't we be able to get on with our jobs without worrying about what is going inside the black box? If that is your attitude, fine. If you want to remain inside the dream world of The Matrix, that's your choice.

Comments

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

This is yet another reason why Windows is such a dangerous commodity. It lulls us into the pernicious illusion that we can deal with computers without adapting to their logic. By presenting us with colourful screens and buttons for us to click on, Microsoft encourages us to believe that we can force computers to adapt entirely to our preferences for visual images, without having to adapt ourselves to their preference for text.


Now, as someone who was born a child of DOS, can write a webpage in her sleep, and likes the nitty-gritty of the insides... I hate Windows XP, but I use it, because I don't have the money or patience to buy new software or to be incompatible with the rest of the world right now. Linux would be a nice solution, and it's on my nebulous list of Things to Do in the future. But to be fair, at least: Macs, where most people who decry Windows then point, are even worse for allowing people to see what runs their machine. Their entire philosphoy and marketing structure are built around, "you're too stupid to understand anything about your own system, so we're going to sell you an iMac. It's red." I worked in the computer labs at UMass for all four years I was there, and I was sort of a general tech line for my friends, and I really refuse to be friends with dumb peple but when it came to computers, man they'd push every button. I vote for having DOS back.

(But I like having pretty websites and programs -- I see no problem with that, because that's human to human communication, using the computer as a display device.)

[comradexavier.livejournal.com]

You might want to take another look at Apple's OS X. Underneath the pretty interface (which, by the way, offers nice, quick ways to configure just about anything in the system) is a reasonably standard BSD-based UNIX system. You can even get the source code to it from Apple, under the name Darwin (http://www.apple.com/darwin/); you don't get the source for the UI portion, but I don't fault Apple for wanting something proprietary that they can use to differentiate themselves in the market.

As far as hardware goes, sure, you can't dink around much in the insides of an iMac, but a physically similar Intel-architecture PC wouldn't allow any more customizability. If you look at the full-sized Macs, the G3, G4, and G5 towers, you'll find that they use standard ATA-type disks, and you can drop in regular PCI cards and standard SDRAM (or DDR-SDRAM, with some of the later models).

Finally, and on a less technical note: just because it's good to encourage people to understand how their computers work doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to understand. There are people who want the iMac because they don't have to understand how to use the UNIX command-line interface that Apple hid when they built OS X. These people shouldn't be denied the benefits of using computers because they lack the time, ability, or inclination to seriously study the complex workings of computer operating systems. Furthermore, fewer people will choose to understand if they have to jump from, "Look, a computer!" to, "My kernel patch enables controlling staplers and mini-fridges through a new character file in the /dev/doodads directory!" without, "Say, these files I use on the desktop? I wonder how the computer actually stores them?" in between.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

It's true that not everyone needs to have a programmer level of understanding. For all my knowledge well above and beyond that of the average user, I know, overall, very little. I think the major problems are those of common sense and logic, which are, indeed, rare in all situations, not just those involving technology.

As for taking a closer look at any hardware, mac or pc, it's going to be a few years before I have the money where it matters. ;) And although you're quite right about the tower macs, and I was hasty in my "speech," it's true that their major marketing campaigns are geared toward simplicity and a certain type of ignorance. I certainly do not deny a similar push in windows machines and marketing. Mostly, I just wish people even understood things like the difference etween a document and a program. It would have gone a long way towards making my job easier.

(Favorite question: a girl walked into the lab and asked, "excuse me, where is the internet?" I couldn't help it, before I even knew what I was saying I gave her a beatific smile, spread my hands wide, and said, "the internet is all around us." She gave me a blank look, and I guided her to a computer.)

[comradexavier.livejournal.com]

From a technical support point of view, I can certainly sympathize with you. Although it's never been my job, a large number of people, some of whom have barely met me, have asked me to help with their computer problems.

However, I would go so far as to propose two ideals: one where everyone who uses computers understands the basics, and another possibility where user interfaces become so intuitive that no instruction is necessary. I doubt either is realistic.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the user interface can be intuitive, but the underlying structure can still betray it (I think this as I recall, somewhat fondly, years of the error message, "Windows has caused a fatal exception error in module [hex code]"). Understanding at least the very basics though, as you say, would make that kind of situation much easier to handle. I think both of the major operating systems -- Win XP and Mac OS X -- have taken steps towards making the daily operations simpler (Win XP volunteered to "clean" my desktop for me the other day, and remove the icons I don't use. I only keep about 10 icons on my desktop in the first place, because I know how to put them there and take them away again myself, which is surprisingly rare), but perhaps at the expense of understanding.

::shrugs:: Anyway, yes. As you say, an ideal, but unlikely, pair of goals.

[parakleta.livejournal.com]

major marketing campaigns are geared toward simplicity

This really depends on what circles you move in. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people have pre-conceived notions of what macs are like, and a lot of people don't realise how much has changed since Steve Jobs came back, so they only hear that part of it. The amount of marketing and promotion of their BSD underpinnings is phenomenal, but most of it tends to be towards the people who are going to understand it. It'd be a bit of a waste to promote these features to someone who just wants a fancy toaster.

Compare this (http://www.apple.com/macosx/) to this (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/).

Having been to quite a few Apple developer conferences recently, their focus is two fold. Making the system just work, kind of like you expect your appliances to just work, so that people who use their computers to get stuff done, can focus on getting the stuff done, not on making the computer do what they want. Computers should just work. The new buzzword: ubiquitous. That's the whole point of the iLife suite of software.

Their other focus is on developers, and enterprise computing. Making the OS as powerful and flexible and open at the grass roots level to encourage developers and big businesses to use it. As a developer, I can't think of anything that I could possibly want that Mac OS X doesn't provide. As a Unix junkie, I love having all the normal tools available, and I love that I can push the GUI around from the command line if I want to, or bypass it completely when it's more convenient to do so. And Applescript, which has always been available, is amazing. I think the people that have always complained that you couldn't do what you want on Mac's, that it was too hard to get under the lid, only said that because they didn't know how. It wasn't that you couldn't, it was just that you had to know what you were doing to get there.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

When I say "major marketing campaign," I mean what the average person sees -- TV, magazines, subway posters. What you're talking is specialized marketing, which is always different. And understandably so.

[cosmolinguist]

While I agree with what etoilepb said originally--the mass-marketing is just trying to sell you a cool toy (and look at how they're marketing iPods now, and at how excited everybody has gotten over iTunes ... Apple continues to strive to be the "cool" computer company and it seems to be working for them). It's why (some) Mac users are so self-righteous about how much better they are than people who use Windows. It's an interesting thing to see.

By the way, you and comradexavier, with his new Powerbook, are totally making me want a Mac myself. And I don't have any money, or any need for one, so I think you guys should all knock that off and stop telling me how cool they are, so I quit pining for one! :-)

[tenbaset.livejournal.com]

Hehe, it's stage three computer science where I come from - the building up conceptual models. Generally there are those that build rather bad "genie" models where the thing just appears to work by magic, without rhyme or reason but a dozens of "click here and this magic smoke appears" rules, and there are those that build up coherent multi-layer models.

(Is that a collection of bits, numbers, a file, characters, paragraphs and formatting, document or a letter I see before me? Answer: All of the above. And then some.)