Cara, thanks for the excellent post. it is a very proactive view point.
bring onthe future. Pete On Jan 31, 2010, at 3:15 PM, Cara Quinn wrote: > Good day All! > > I thought I'd post the below, as I believe its sentiments are particularly > relevant to our discussions of late, as well as to how VI / blind users deal > with digital access in its current incarnation. > > I'll include both the link and the blog posting itself for convenience. > > Be warned, this is not only a long post, but does contain the occasional bit > of colorful vocab. So if you're sensitive to that sort of thing, then you may > choose to pass it over. It's up to you… > > Anyway, Thanks to Josh de Lioncourt for finding this tidbit. > > EnJoy, and have a lovely day!… > > Smiles, > > Cara :) > > link to post: > > http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been > > > Blog post: > > I need to talk to you about computers. I’ve been on a veritable > roller-coaster of “how I feel” about the iPad announcement, and trying not to > write about it until I had at least an inkling of what was at the root of > that. > Before we begin, a reminder: On this blog, I speak only for myself, not for > my company or my co-workers. > The thing is, to talk about specific hardware (like the iPad or iPhone or > Nexus One or Droid) is to miss entirely the point I’m about to try to make. > This is more important than USB ports, GPS modules, or front-facing cameras. > Gigabytes, gigahertz, megapixels, screen resolution, physical dimensions, > form factors, in fact hardware in general — these are all irrelevant to the > following discussion. So, I’m going to try to completely avoid talking about > those sorts of things. > Let’s instead establish some new terminology: Old World and New World > computing. > Introduction > Personal computing — having a computer in your house (or your pocket) — as a > whole is young. As we know it today, it’s less than a half-century old. It’s > younger than TV, younger than radio, younger than cars and airplanes, younger > than quite a few living people in fact. > In that really incredibly short space of time we’ve gone from > punchcards-and-printers to interactive terminals with command lines to > window-and-mouse interfaces, each a paradigm shift unto themselves. A lot of > thoughtful people, many of whom are bloggers, look at this history and say, > “Look at this march of progress! Surely the desktop + windows + mouse > interface can’t be the end of the road? What’s next?” > Then “next” arrived and it was so unrecognizable to most of them (myself > included) that we looked at it said, “What in the shit is this?” > The Old World > In the Old World, computers are general purpose, do-it-all machines. They can > do hundreds of thousands of different things, sometimes all at the same time. > We buy them for pennies, load them up to the gills with whatever we feel > like, and then we pay for it with instability, performance degradation, > viruses, and steep learning curves. Old World computers can do pretty much > anything, but carry the burden of 30 years of rapid, unplanned change. > Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X based computers all fall into this category. > The New World > In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing > the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, > then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the > moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, > their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash, but their users have lost > a degree of freedom. New World computers have unprecedented ease of use, and > benefit from decades of research into human-computer interaction. They are > immediately understandable, fast, stable, and laser-focused on the 80% of the > famous 80/20 rule. > Is the New World better than the Old World? Nothing’s ever simply black or > white. > Floppy Disks > An anecdote: When the iMac came out, Apple drew a line in the sand. They > said: we are no longer going to ship a computer with a floppy disk drive. The > entire industry shit its pants so loudly and forcefully that you probably > could have heard it from outer space. > Are you insane? I spent all this money on a floppy drive! All my software is > on floppy disks! You’ve committed brand suicide! Nobody will stand for this! > Fast-forward to today. I can’t think of a single useful thing to do with a > floppy disk. I can go to the supermarket and buy a CD, DVD, or flash drive > that is faster, smaller, and stores 1,000 times as much data for typically > less than a box of floppies used to cost. Or better still, we can just toss > things to each other over the network. > To get there, yes, we had to throw away some of our investment in hardware. > We had to re-think how we did things. It required adjustment. A bit of > sacrifice. The end result, I think we can all agree regardless of what > platform we use, is orders of magnitude more convenient, easier to use, and > in line with today’s storage requirements. > Staying with floppies would have spared us the inconvenience of that > transition but at what long-term cost? > Nothing is ever simply black or white. There was a cost to making the > transition. But there was a benefit to doing so. > To change was not all good. To stay put was not all bad. But there was a > ratio of goodness-to-badness that, in the long run, was quite favorable for > everyone involved. However in the short term it seemed so insurmountable, so > ludicrous, that it beggared the belief of a large number of otherwise very > intelligent people. > For a species so famous for being adaptable to its environment, we certainly > abhor change. Especially a change that involves any amount of money being > spent. > Cars > John Gruber used car transmissions for his analogy, and it’s apt. When I > learned to drive, my dad insisted that I learn on a manual transmission so I > would be able to drive any car. I think this was a wise and valuable thing to > do. > But even having learned it, these days I drive an automatic. Nothing is black > and white — I sacrifice maybe a tiny amount of fuel efficiency and a certain > amount of control over my car in adverse situations that I generally never > encounter. In exchange, my brain is freed up to focus on the the road ahead, > getting where I’m going, and avoiding obstacles (strategy), not the minutiae > of choosing the best possible gear ratio (tactics). > Is a stick shift better than an automatic? No. Is an automatic better than a > stick? No. This misses the point. A better question: Is a road full of > drivers not distracted by the arcane inner workings of their vehicle safer? > It’s likely. And that has a value. Possibly a value that outweighs the value > offered by a stick shift if we aggregate it across everyone in the world who > drives. > Changing of the Guard > When I think about the age ranges of people who fall into the Old World of > computing, it is roughly bell-curved with Generation X (hello) approximately > in the center. That, to me, is fascinating — Old World users are sandwiched > between New World users who are both younger and older than them. > Some elder family members of mine recently got New World cell phones. I > watched as they loaded dozens of apps willy-nilly onto them which, on any > other phone, would have turned it into a sluggish, crash-prone > battery-vampire. But it didn’t happen. I no longer get summoned for phone > help, because it is self-evident how to use it, and things just generally > don’t go wrong like they used to on their Old World devices. > New Worlders have no reason to be gun-shy about loading up their device with > apps. Why would that break anything? Old Worlders on the other hand have been > browbeaten to the point of expecting such behavior to lead to problems. We’re > genuinely surprised when it doesn’t. > But the New World scares the living hell out of a lot of the Old Worlders. > Why is that? > The Needs of the Few > When the iPhone came out, I was immediately in love, but frustrated by the > lack of an SDK. When an SDK came out, I was overjoyed, but frustrated by > Apple’s process. As some high-profile problems began to pile up, I infamously > railed against the whole idea right here on this very blog. I announced I was > beginning a boycott of iPhone-based devices until changes were made, and I > certainly, certainly was not going to buy any future iPhone-based products. I > switched to various other devices that were a bit more friendly to Old > Worlders. > It lasted all of a month. > For as frustrated as I was with the restrictions, those exact same > restrictions made the New World device a high-performance, high-reliability, > absolute workhorse of a machine that got out of my way and just let me get > things accomplished. > Nothing is simply black or white. > Old Worlders are particularly sensitive to certain things that are simply > non-issues to New Worlders. We learned about computers from the inside out. > Many of us became interested in computers because they were hackable, open, > and without restrictions. We worry that these New World devices are stifling > the next generation of programmers. But can anyone point to evidence that > that’s really happening? I don’t know about you, but I see more people > carrying handheld computers than at any point in history. If even a small > percentage of them are interested in “what makes this thing tick?” then we’ve > got quite a few new programmers in the pipeline. > The reason I’m starting to think the Old World is ultimately doomed is > because we are bracketed on both sides by the New World, and those people > being born today, post-iPhone and post-iPad, will never know (and probably > not care) about how things used to work. Just as nobody today cares about > floppies, and nobody has to care about manual transmissions if they don’t > want to. > If you total up everyone older than the beginning of the Old World, and every > person yet to be born, you end up with a much greater number of people than > there are in the Old World. > And to that dramatically greater number of people, what do you think is more > important? An easy-to-use, crash-proof device? Or a massively complex tangle > of toolbars, menus, and windows because that’s what props up an entrenched > software oligarchy? > Fellow Old Worlders, I hate to tell you this: we are a minority. The question > is not “will the desktop metaphor go away?” The question is “why has it taken > this long for the desktop metaphor to go away?” > But, But I’m a Professional! > This is a great toy for newbies, but how am I supposed to get any SERIOUS > work done with it? After all, I’m a PRO EXPERT MEGA USER! I MUST HAVE > TOOLBARS, WINDOWS, AND… > OK, stop for a second. > First, I would put the birth of New World computing at 2007, with the > introduction of the iPhone. You could even arguably stretch it a bit further > back to the birth of “Web 2.0” applications in the early 2000s. But it’s > brand new. If computers in general are young, New World computing is fresh > out of the womb, covered in blood and screaming. > It’s got a bit of development to go. > I encourage you to look at this argument in terms of what you are really > trying to achieve rather than the way you are used to going about it. > Let’s pick a ridiculous example and say I work in digital video, and I need > to encode huge amounts of video data into some advanced format, and send that > off to a server somewhere. I could never do that on an iPad! Right? > Well, no, today, probably not. But could you do it on a future New World > computer in the general sense? > Remember, the hardware is a non-issue: Flash storage will grow to terabytes > in size. CPUs will continue to multiply in power as they always have. > Displays, batteries, everything will improve given enough time. > As I see it, many of these “BUT I’M AN EXPERT” situations can be resolved by > making just a few key modifications: > 1. A managed way of putting processes in the background. New > Worlders are benefiting already from the improved performance and battery > life provided by the inability to run a task in the background. Meanwhile, > Old Worlders are tearing their hair out. I CAN’T MULTITASK, right? It seems > like there has to be a reasonable middle ground. Maybe processes can petition > the OS for background time. Maybe a user can “opt-in” to background > processes. I don’t know. But it seems like there must be an in-between that > doesn’t sacrifice what we’ve gained for some of the flexibility we’re used to. > 2. A way of sharing data with other devices. New World devices are > easy to learn and highly usable because they do not expose the filesystem to > users and they are “data islands”. We are no longer working with “files” but > we are still working with data blobs that it would be valuable to be able to > exchange with each other. Perhaps the network wins here. Perhaps flash drives > that we never see the contents of. The Newton was, to my knowledge, the first > generally available device where you could just say “put this app and all > data I’ve created with it on this removable card” without ever once seeing a > file or a folder. Its sizable Achilles’ Heel was that only other Newtons > understood the data format. > 3. A way of sharing data between applications. Something like the > clipboard, but bigger. This is not a filesystem, but a way of saying “bring > this data object from this app to this app”. I’ve made this painting in my > painting app, and now I want to bring it over here to crop it and apply > filters. > By just addressing those three things (and I admit they are not simple > feats), I think all but the absolutely most specialized of computer tasks > become quite feasible on a New World device. > A Bet on the Future > Apple is calling the iPad a “third category” between phones and laptops. I am > increasingly convinced that this is just to make it palatable to you while > everything shifts to New World ideology over the next 10-20 years. > Just like with floppy disks, the rest of the industry is quite content to let > Apple be the ones to stick their necks out on this. It’s a gamble to be sure. > But if Apple wins the gamble (so far it’s going well), they are going to be > years and years ahead of their competition. If Apple loses the gamble, well, > they have no debt and are sitting on a Fort Knox-like pile of cash. It’s not > going to sink them. > The bet is roughly that the future of computing: > 1. has a UI model based on direct manipulation of data objects > 2. completely hides the filesystem from the user > 3. favors ease of use and reduction of complexity over absolute > flexibility > 4. favors benefit to the end-user rather than the developer or > other vendors > 5. lives atop built-to-specific-purpose native applications and > universally available web apps > All in all, it sounds like a pretty feasible outcome, and really not a bad > one at that. > But we Old Worlders have to come to grips with the fact that a lot of things > we are used to are going away. Maybe not for a while, but they are. > Will the whole industry move to New World computing? Not unless Apple is > demonstrably successful with this approach. So I’d say you’re unlikely to see > it universally applied to all computing devices within the next couple of > decades. > But Wednesday’s keynote tells me this is where Apple is going. Plan > accordingly. > How long will it take to complete this Old World to New World shift? My > guess? The end is near when you can bootstrap a new iPad application on an > iPad. When you can comfortably do that without pining for a traditional > desktop, the days of Old World computing are officially numbered. > The iPad as a particular device is not necessarily the future of computing. > But as an ideology, I think it just might be. In hindsight, I think arguments > over “why would I buy this if I already have a phone and a laptop?” are going > to seem as silly as “why would I buy an iPod if it has less space than a > Nomad?” > --- > View my Online Portfolio at: > > http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn > > Follow me on Twitter! > > https://twitter.com/ModelCara > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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