Weiner, Bush, and Engelbart
Just a quick note to pass on a few references. Norbert Weiner, Vannevar Bush, and Doug Englebart have long been some of my favorite "futurists." I use quotes as I'm not sure it's an apropos description as we consider the current meaning of the word. When I think about "futurist" or "technologist" or even "methodoligist," there's definitely a component of cheer-leading evangelism. In contrast to guys like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, these guys laid out cogent theories about the future intersection of society and technology; they weren't out to sell anything, not a product anyway. They really were looking to sell ideas about what society could become if it adapted to emerging technologies.
We're now in the early 2000's and the info-utopian futures seen by these guys seem farther away than ever. Yes, everyone has a PC on their desk (or two or three...) The Handspring Visor PDA I carried around with me for so long had about the same computational power as some of the early Smalltalk machines. Broadband access to the net is cheaper than it's ever been. But software is rigid and monolithic. Seriously, have you tried to change Excel's behavior?
Weiner, Bush, and Englebart saw a different future. Information was manipulated, stored and shared by groups. The network was a key component; communicating information amongst communities of consenting adults. Information manipulation tools were another component: browsing "live" groves of information trees using associative hyperlinks. Information processing equipment was simultaneously controlled by and controlling people: after you direct your daytimer to setup a meeting with three peers, it might automatically enter the meeting in your daytimer, and if you wanted to benefit from the technology, you would do what your daytimer tells you to do and pick up the phone at the agreed upon time.
Here are a few links to get you started. In 1945, Vannevar Bush published this short work in The Atlantic Monthly: As We May Think might be the first reference to hypertext. Doug Englebart has pumped a fair amount of energy into The Bootstrap Institute. The organization's goals are to increase our "Collective IQ" to maximize our wisdom rather than enforcing the lowest common denominator. Many of Norbert Weiner's books can be found at Amazon.Com or Barnes and Noble.
My favorite Weiner quote is "Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith." While I'm a bit religious myself, I'm not sure he's talking about faith in the God described by most organized religions. Rather, I suspect he's talking about the faith one has in one's relationship with oneself, the community, and ultimately the universe itself. I believe he's talking less about religion and more about the "open" society. In the open society, regulation and governmental structures do not presume to have definitive answers to life's big questions. Individual members of society and non-governmental organizations are free to propose answers, but solutions based on these answers are enforced by consensus and the "dictatorship of the majority" is discouraged by instituting controls against ideological monoculture. Weiner's "faith" is therefore an expression that the product of their work will be freely distributable. It can be published openly. Ignored by those who disagree, referenced by those who agree, but not suppressed.
And this is the freedom I'm looking for in my technology. The 20th century saw the fall of several political systems that claimed to have "the answer." The Nazis had their fuhrer princip that called for obedience to the will of the great and wise leader. While communism sounds great on paper, it's implementation in Stalinist Russia seemed more like Nazi Germany than any worker's utopia. The Fascists had their own spin on life. Political conformity was the common denominator. In each system a central authority acted as ultimate arbiter of acceptable thought, defining a universal orthodoxy.
Political freedom is increasingly the norm in the world. Sure, there are places in central Asia that haven't gotten the memo yet, and the struggle between tribalism and globalism is sure to pressure open societies to close ranks. But in Burrough's words, "There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers."
And it is this openness that I'm looking for in my information systems. As much as I love Microsoft Streets & Trips and WindowsCE, I just can't buy into the inflexibility of desktop Windows or the overarching architectural grandiosity of .NET. In short, I don't want to buy all my solutions from one company. I want Sun, Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle to provide interoperable components that I can string together to produce best of breed solutions. No one company has all the right answers. Stop pretending like you do.
But the prevailing business model is "Never make it easy for a customer to use a competitor's product."
From a cultural perspective, we're looking at the clash of two forces. In one hand you have the forces of proprietary systems. These are the systems that are easiest to figure out how to sell. If you have a good proprietary system that addresses an under-served niche, then you and your investors will make a lot of money. And there's nothing wrong with making money. On the other hand you have open systems. These are systems that are easier to configure and conform with de facto or de jure standards. I would go on to say they're reconfigurable at run-time and are infinitely flexible. They're terribly hard to support and it's even harder to figure out how to bill people for them.
The rigid nature of existing applications and application development tools make it difficult to build good, flexible collaborative tools. And this is a problem; the tag-line for the future will be "collaborate or die!" If we're forced to communicate using prevalent collaborative paradigms(*), we're in trouble.
So, getting back to Weiner, Bush, and Englebart, to synthesize their views, we might say:
- Technology is morally neutral. Increasing mechanization of society is not in and of itself bad, but may bring undesirable results if we do not think about our societal goals and how technology enables those interests that run counter to those providing "the greatest good."
- Technology can amplify human intellect. Throughout the industrial revolution we saw machines developed to amplify human strength. Now that we're in the information revolution, machines can be used to amplify our Collective IQ
- We're not really doing it now. What with near universal access to computing equipment and widescale deployment of broadband internet access, it's hard to believe we're not in the middle of a data utopia. Well... we're half way there. We've deployed computing and networking hardware, but the software and services are setup for a consumer model. If you want to consume digital content, everything is there for you. If you want to collaborate or produce digital content, there's still quite a bit more work you have to do.
And if I could add my observation:
- We're not moving in the right direction. State of the art machines in 1980 were probably early Unix machines or machines that ran Smalltalk. The Smalltalk interface looks a little primitive by todays standards, but it's only the form of the interface that's been improved. Smalltalk was a true object oriented system where the system source code was not only available to all, you were even allowed to modify it. Debugging tools were integrated into the development environment and the "image based" development system allowed each system running Smalltalk to be configured to be a Smalltalk programming system. In other words, if you deployed a system, you could debug on the production system if needed. Modern systems are more efficient with processor utilization, but lock the user out from extending their applications or debugging live systems. And don't get me started about the web...
- Commercial software vendors are optimizing for the lowest common denominator. Okay... this might be a little harsh. There are plenty of commercial software vendors that are doing good work. However, as an industry, we seem to be spending quite a bit of money on products that reinforce the "flexible development / rigid deployment" model. Which is to say, as software development tools have become increasingly flexible, their products have become increasingly rigid. This isn't too hard to understand. Commercial software developers want your money. To justify taking your money, they provide you with an "application." It's up to you to figure out how to integrate the application into your work flow, the developer focuses on refining the operation of the application. The "application" is like a walled medieval city; there is a thin interface with the outside world, and the inside is hidden from scrutiny. ISVs could ( and probably should ) improve the interface with the outside world in an effort to make integration with the customer's environment more seamless. But with fixed development resources, it's a hard sell. Do you spend time refining your features, or do you spend time refining an interface few will ever see and could potentially benefit the competition?
* Long ago I promised never to use the word "paradigm" again. Please let me apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.
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