The trouble with computers 

by Chris Gulker 

Computers don't work.

Or, at least, they don't work very well. They don't really deliver on the
grand promise of information at everybody's finger tips - and you don't
have to take my word for it

August and respected institutions have come to this conclusion, including
establishments like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other
academic, corporate and governmental concerns with a vested interest in
high tech.

Thomas Landauer, a former director of Bellcore, one of America's most
prestigious research enterprises, has written a book about it. Aptly enough,
he calls it "The Trouble with Computers". Bellcore, by the way, is where
the transistor was invented

Computers do offer great advantages: indeed, there are businesses that
probably couldn't exist without them, or, at least, couldn't operate on a
global scale. Airlines, stock exchanges, overnight package delivery, even
most modern telephone systems rely heavily on computers.

However, the penalty for their use is great. Study after study has shown that
the information industry has demonstrated only the barest of efficiency
increases, if any, since computers came into widespread use. 

This stands in sharp contrast to factory automation, where business (if not
human) benefits are easily demonstrated by greatly increased efficiency and
lower costs,

And why not, you ask?

Computers, it seems, are needy.

Computers need to be set up, their software needs to be installed, they need
to be configured, reconfigured, upgraded and reconfigured again at
increasingly short intervals. 

They always seem to need extra RAM, faster processors and bigger hard
drives. They need to be replaced outright when the price of a new computer
falls below the cost of an upgrade. 

They need support lines, help files and support people. As computers get
cheaper, they wind up on more desks, requiring more support.

They need things like fonts. Ever spend a half day worrying about or
installing fonts on a typewriter? On a pencil?

They have file formats: I can't read your Microsoft Word 97 document
because I still have Word 5.1. My Windows 95 machine can't read your
Macintosh (or UNIX) file. My Windows NT 3.5 printer software won't
work with Windows NT 4.0 - until the upgrade is released (real soon now). 

None of my PCs can talk to my company's mainframe very well. If
something is changed on the mainframe, it causes unexpected results on my
PC and vice versa. Names used to appear in the names field on my database
client, but today I'm seeing their salary. Systems would fix it, except the
person who knows how to do that is on vacation this week. In the meantime,
"just work around it".

The information on my hard drive may not be the same as you have: we
may not each be making appropriate decisions. When we get to a meeting
and discover the discrepancy, we're not sure who's right. After we track
down the right numbers, we discover we both have to redo our work. 

By then, we may have wasted days or weeks of our employers' time. Good
thing the competition uses computers, too, or our firm would be toast.

The problem, in short, is that computers just aren't made to be used by
humans. They were invented by the inhabitants of planet Geek, where
arcane is chic and obfuscation is cause for celebration.

But, mere complexity it seems was not enough. When it became clear that
dedicated humans were managing to overcome the formidable barriers in
their path, distraction was added.

So, when we're not stuck in computer hell, we go off to computer
Disneyland.

We surf the Web, try out new software, download stuff, play games and
email lost cousins in lower Volta. We scan the contents of the world
anarchist's cartoon FTP site and try to find our name in the archives of all
456 online newspapers. 

We get lost exploring features like recording audio annotations for memos
and attaching video clips to spreadsheets.

We get 60 email messages a day. We spend much time shuffling through
Internet chain letters, unsolicited offers of toe-fungus remedy and CCs of
Re: Fwd:s.

We miss critical communiques that have unfortunate, uncompelling subject
lines like "Absolutely URGENT you read this immediately ", which
we've learned is usually reserved for items like a fellow
employee's price list for vegetable sculptures.

Fortunately, that mighty engine of the information superhighway, the World
Wide Web, has come to our rescue. 

A clever marketing person recently queried a search engine for information
about products similar to her own, reasoning that she might catch details of
her competition's marketing programs.

She got back a page saying "20,000 documents match all or some of your
search terms - listing first 100". Three hours of viewing documents about
the diseases of marine mammals, sex academies and family genealogy, were
not enough to deter her.

Until she hit the Luddites Home Page (www.luddites.com).

She hasn't used her computer since.
