Results tagged “technology”

I've been playing around with some radical minimal design ideas lately, and it occurs to me that I'm not so sure that we need HTML, at least for "normal" work.

Think about what most professionals do all day. You're an accountant. You're an insurance agent. You're a policeman. You're a manager. You're a factory worker.

What do you need HTML for? As an accountant, say reviewing a ledger, you need to look a couple of lists of things and compare them. The idea of a displayed list certainly predates HTML. As an insurance agent, you need somebody to complete a claim. Modern voice systems can certainly interview the person, make a stab at word recognition, and you can easily outsource the quality control overseas at pennies per form. Bingo presto, not only do you have your form completed, the system is beginning to learn the spoken word of the customer, and it was a natural question-and-answer format instead of plugging through some long form on-screen.

In fact, I've spent the last day trying to think up some combination of activities that can't be done with a blinking light, a pushbutton, and a list/text/image display.

I can't, and that's strange.

I have no idea what hyperlinks accomplish, for instance. I mean, I understand the point. And they are awesome creatures of the internet. But who's job requires a hyperlink? Sure, things need to be linked together, but the physical construct of an underlined piece of text that, when clicked, takes you somewhere else? Nobody has a need in their normal job to go to random places depending on which text is annotated. Most jobs are not that free-form.

It sounds nutty, I know. And pay attention: I am not saying that HTML shouldn't exist, or that things shouldn't be linked together, or that the semantic web isn't a good thing. What I'm asking is: simply because something makes sense in hypertext markup, should it appear on a screen somewhere?

I'm a policeman accessing a list of recent crimes. Here's the dirty little secret from systems design -- there are only a couple dozen activities for any one job that take up 99% of your time. Sometimes there is only one or two activities that you do all day long. So I push the "recent crimes" button, perhaps a physical, real button, and there's a list of recent crimes. No links, no tables, no bold text, no flashing or jumping bunnies. No fonts. Just a list. Of stuff I need to know. mirabile dictu

How far we've come.

HTML was started with the idea that the display of information would be a completely different problem than the structure of it. But look what's happened since then: it's all about display. How big the screen size is in pixels, what kinds of fonts you have (or can install), whether or not you support flash, etc.

All of this is great from a one-system-must-conquer-the-world standpoint, but completely wrong-headed from a I-need-to-separate-different-parts-of-my-life department. We're trying to invent sort of a universal generic display language. Wonderful concept, but that's not where we started out going. Or if it was, I missed it. I thought the display aspect was secondary, not primary.

But then came advertising. And money. Lots of it.

My thesis is that at some point in the last 10-15 years, the HTML web has crossed the line from being an information structure and became an entertainment medium. That's cool, and I wouldn't want to take away the goodness of the net for anything. I'm simply asking if using an entertainment medium to do your job is such a good idea. For most of us, I don't think so.

Of course, there will always be a place for the arts -- painting, writing, movies, games, music, etc -- and HTML and computers are wonderful tools for the creation and enjoyment of the arts. Most of our jobs though, however sadly, are not art.

Advertising has created wonderful general-purpose devices that can switch from balancing a checkbook to flying a F-15 in a split second. One browser page can have your investment information and the next one Facebook. And world opinion. And lolcats. Strategic investment advice. And porn. It's all one of the same. Sometimes barriers are good things. A site that pulls you in with messages from your friends can then get you to click one link -- it only takes one click -- and you've lost 30 hours playing Farmville. These are all the benefits, and drawbacks, of hyper-text markup language the way it is being used today.

And we really don't need it all that much.

I was watching the remastered versions of the old 1960s Star Trek TV show the other day, and while the new graphics were great, I couldn't help but think how god-awful the instruments and displays were, compared what we are using today.

But then -- being the contrarian I am -- I thought: Doesn't this actually make a bit of sense?

"It's too much. It's hard to just stop using the net or something. Like right now I'm filling out this form when I should be concentrating on a different task."

"I am so used to brevity now as a product of twitter, article summaries, etc that it is a huge chore to sit down and read something longer - a long blog post, or a book. I find myself wishing all information were condensed into a paragraph or two at most. I don't like this trend in myself and wish my ability to concentrate/focus on longer written material would return."

"I would like to be more in control."

"I would like it if other people, such as yourselves, would stop demonizing this perfectly normal behavior in a reactionary fashion."

And so we begin our journey into the mind of the average techie internet user.

I sat down with a bunch of my friends yesterday and had a detailed conversation about digital drugs. I was wondering -- am I the only person who views this as a problem? Instead of chatting, I decided to use an online survey tool so that I could slice and dice the data. And here's what I found:

Yesterday a couple of readers gave me grief for all the "knowns", "unknown knowns", "unknown unknowns", etc.. On top of that , the definitions got a little loose in the essay.

So instead of fixing the essay (Gad no! This is the internet! 2-hours work constitutes long-term commitment) I thought I would enumerate the scale of what you can know and what you can't. I'm probably reinventing something from somewhere, but I think these distinctions are important enough to restate. One of the authors from the articles I quote came to the conclusion that you can deal with any amount of unknowns simply by knowing the questions. Hell no. That's totally whacked.

Ten years ago I sat in the office of a high-ranking procurement officer in the military. He was a fast-riser, had a masters in mathematics and was a very sharp guy. I was explaining to him that the way the software development was going on a certain project was troublesome. The people, technology, process, environment, and bureaucracy were not working together. Instead various misunderstandings, agendas, confusion, and ignorance was causing chaos and poor performance.

It was a complicated discussion, made more so because each of the varying factors - people, technology, process, bureaucracy, environment - were pretty dang complicated in their own right. The way they all worked together -- or were supposed to work together -- was even more complex. Remember, this guy was probably a genius. Literally responsible for tens of billions of dollars. But he had no concept of what he didn't know. It was like trying to explain String Theory to Julius Caesar. We just had no place to meet. Sure, given a few weeks of gaining some common understanding, this guy would be teaching me something. There was no stupidity at work -- he was a brilliant man. He wasn't even classically ignorant -- it wasn't like I could give him a class and a couple of tests and somehow that would fix things. We simply couldn't communicate.

I'll never forget what he said.

"I'm not sure I'm following you completely, but you see, I'm on top of the whole thing. I can ask any questions I like and get an answer"

My thoughts were: yes! But you neither know the correct questions, what the answers might imply, or how the answers to one question might lead to other questions!

Simply asking and answering questions is not enough. This guy had the magic power -- whatever he asked, you can be sure that somebody was going to work as hard as they could to come up with an answer. And the project was still hosed up.

So in the interest of simplifying the discussion of how ignorant we all are in various ways, I propose the following scale:

This is my first shot at collaborative blogging -- where you, the user, have just as much control over the blog as I do.

I'll ask the question and you guys respond, both by voting, giving options, and commenting. As things progress, you can send links to other people to join the conversation, add in text, images, video, video conferencing, IM, mindmaps, embed the results in your own blog, or whatever. Whatever you think is appropriate for the topic.

Then you can monitor the changes as other people add their thoughts effortlessly -- using the web.

We're using Google Wave, so if you don't have it and would like it visit the site or ask for an invite. It's all web-based (works best in Chrome) and it's probably the future of something-or-another. That's kind of what we're trying to figure out. Not sure, but I think you're going to need a high-speed connection for this.

Ever since I wrote the article comparing technology to heroin, I've been been thinking about mind and body-altering things and how morals, standards, and mores build up around them to contain the damage and maximize the benefits to society. As we get more and more integrated with technology, I'm waiting for some new standards to emerge about what is acceptable or not -- I think this is a vital next step to maintain some kind of vigor in the species.

Since nobody else is doing anything else along these lines that I can see, I thought I'd create a few standards or morals for myself. A "standard" is just a better way of doing things: standards change over time. A "moral" is something that I personally do not do because I find it harms myself or others. You create standards and you discover morals. I apply the simple rule of discovering morals by asking "If I made this moral a universal law, would more people be helped than harmed by it?"

So let's get with it.

Fireproof, which cost $500K to make, has made over $50 Million
Actors volunteered their time. The movie only scored a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes

Yesterday I watched the movie "Fireproof" with my wife.

I don't do movie reviews, but it was a lot like what you'd get if the local protestant church made a movie about how to make your marriage better. Which is logical, since the movie was made by a large protestant church trying to help people's marriages.

Why watch it? I had heard it was quite a social phenomenon, making millions from just a shoestring budget, so I was fascinated as to the content and quality. I'm also a movie junkie, and successful indie movies are always interesting to see. Plus I grew up in a protestant household, and was curious to see what those wild and crazy protestants were up to.

What struck me wasn't the quality of the movie -- it had a worn-down plot being executed bravely but crudely by mostly volunteer actors -- it was that the relationship that is starting to develop between technology and religion is the same as the one between the technology and courts. (SPOILERS after the jump)

In 1850 people didn't know how their favorite symphony sounded.

You might only hear your favorite symphony 5 or 6 times in your life. Each time it was probably slightly in a different key, with a slightly different tempo, played with slightly different instruments, and each time you actively strained to hear and remember how it all sounded.

You would sit very attentively, absorbing each and every note and drumbeat of the symphony. It was a play, a painting, an imaginary world come to life, and you were living in it. It was magic.

Want some fun diversion? That was different too. You could read, which required an above average education and concentration. The more you read, however, the more you could read, so it was a self-reinforcing pastime. You could perform music, which also took years of study and was self-reinforcing. Then there were games, which mostly either involved physical exercise or concentration.

Everything back then took work and time. In rural America, it wasn't unusual to walk five miles to a friend's house to play a few games of checkers. Life was monotonous and physically challenging. In the countryside there was no plumbing and electricity hadn't been invented yet. You spent a lot of time hauling around water, chopping firewood, planting and tending crops. It took nearly continuous physical activity. Leisure was no different: it took time, work, and active minds.

Want to socialize, hang out with the buds? It was a big deal, a special day. You'd either walk a ways or get on your horse and ride. If it were a really big day, like election, you'd hitch the wagon up to the plow team. It was a lot of work and hassle, but eventually you'd end up at the dance, the election, the church, the pub, or wherever. There would be drinking and story-telling ugoing on for hours on end. Hey -- these were your friends and it took a lot of hassle to spend time with them. For instance, when the American Colonies were formed, Ben Franklin and a few other delegates threw a kegger before everybody else arrived that went on for several days.

The chemical diversion for the vast majority of people was alcohol. Who can forget Franklin's famous quote about wine?

"Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."

It wasn't an ideal life by any means, but by contrast within 50 years the devil himself paid a visit to western society and it made those days look like a picnic.