Most people do not know how to use the technology functions they have available to them. That ranges from one's watch or cell phone on their bodies to their home PC, microwave, remote control and their business or companies IT systems.
More's law says the power of a chip doubles every 18 moths. Wilbur's axiom says the user interface to that technology moves like a snail does. What does that say for our future?
The PC mouse is one of the worst inventions brought to market. OK, you sight limited people, let's see if you can hit a few pixels on a screen by moving this object around on your cluttered desk! And, when you do, let's see what happens if you press a button at the same time. Guess what, we are not going to tell which button to push, too!
CRTs were questionable. Had an employee who died of brain cancer. He had four CRT's in his office where he spent hours each day for 15 years.
Microsoft Windows still can't get it right after, what, seven releases?
Why is it called software? It betters fit if we call it vaporware or bug-ware, or stupid-ware.
There is nothing Personal any more about the PC and I sometimes wonder about the Computing part.
Who allowed it to become standard to have software installed on your PC without you knowing about it?
Who allowed software licenses to read like they do? Why isn't there a people use license? One that protects us against them? "You can install your software on my equipment if you follow these terms: yada, yada, bla, bla..." If you don't agree, none of your funny-ware on my machine!
When did it become fashionable for you to share with the world what you do all the time? Facebook, Twitter, blogging? When I was young, we use to have similar fun listening in on party lines. Those of you under 30 have a totally different meaning of what a 'party line' is.
Sometimes in the 1970s, I managed a technical support group of a mainframe data center. One night I got a call at home, around dinner time. I answered the call and told the data center guy on the other end: "Take a dump and we'll have somebody look at it in the morning." My two young boys who overheard my half of the conversation fell on the floor laughing so loud that I had to hang up.
In 1981 Bill Gates said: "Nobody needs more than 640K memory on a PC." And the CEO of Digital said: "Nobody needs a PC." Dr Wang invented the tablet PC in the early 80's just before the company took a nose dive into failure taking 36,000 employees with it.
It is interesting that software can have a 'fatal error" and come back to run again and again?
Enough for today.
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