k-punk
Spectres of Mark
All k-punks out there should check out the IT survey in the Economist, which confirms what you don't have to be a rabid cyberpunk to know: most mass market IT is over-complex at the front end. Or too Prog as we k-punks have it.
It seems that a staggering 66% of IT projects either fail outright or take much longer to install than they should because of the arcane complexity of the interfaces. The survey starts with the despairing cry of one John Maeda: 'The computer knows me as its enemy. Everything I touch doesn't work.' OK, many of us have felt like that, but Maeda is a professor in computer design.
How has it come to this?
Well, the tendency of Prog Tech, as k-punks have long complained, is towards 'featuritis.' Most consumers only use 10% of the features on MS Word, for instance, and the obvious and depressingly predicatble result of the MetaStatic proliferation of superflous Prog clutter is that users find it harder to locate those features they DO use.
The survey shows that this is in fact typical of many popular technologies, which start off very feature-laden and demanding at the front end. Clocks and sewing machines used to come with telephone directory-size instruction manuals. Cars used to require their driver to be conversant with the inner workings of the machine (which is the reason that chauffeurs were so popular; running a car required you to be a mechanic, so better to have one on hand).
This can't be overlooked from the producers' POV because is that it is estimated that 70% of the world's population are 'analogues', i.e. those who live in terrified flight from technology (I think I work with most of them, and most of them are in IT support). 15% are 'digital immigrants' - who are typically thirtysomethings like myself who didn't grow up with the technology, but are now reasonably at home with it. That leaves the remaining 15% of teenagers and young adults who have been born into IT and take it for granted. As we all know, it is technology, not music, that produces the real generation gap today.
But if IT is to improve, i.e. become less complex, it will become more invisible. Complexity will go back a step, retreat behind the screen. While this is no doubt positive for consumers, that very fact means that the computer is increasingly becoming only a consumer tool. Kittler has warned about the way in which PCs increasingly lock users out of their inner workings. Doesn't this mean more MyStagoguery, more dependence upon a cadre of initiate-priests?
It seems that a staggering 66% of IT projects either fail outright or take much longer to install than they should because of the arcane complexity of the interfaces. The survey starts with the despairing cry of one John Maeda: 'The computer knows me as its enemy. Everything I touch doesn't work.' OK, many of us have felt like that, but Maeda is a professor in computer design.
How has it come to this?
Well, the tendency of Prog Tech, as k-punks have long complained, is towards 'featuritis.' Most consumers only use 10% of the features on MS Word, for instance, and the obvious and depressingly predicatble result of the MetaStatic proliferation of superflous Prog clutter is that users find it harder to locate those features they DO use.
The survey shows that this is in fact typical of many popular technologies, which start off very feature-laden and demanding at the front end. Clocks and sewing machines used to come with telephone directory-size instruction manuals. Cars used to require their driver to be conversant with the inner workings of the machine (which is the reason that chauffeurs were so popular; running a car required you to be a mechanic, so better to have one on hand).
This can't be overlooked from the producers' POV because is that it is estimated that 70% of the world's population are 'analogues', i.e. those who live in terrified flight from technology (I think I work with most of them, and most of them are in IT support). 15% are 'digital immigrants' - who are typically thirtysomethings like myself who didn't grow up with the technology, but are now reasonably at home with it. That leaves the remaining 15% of teenagers and young adults who have been born into IT and take it for granted. As we all know, it is technology, not music, that produces the real generation gap today.
But if IT is to improve, i.e. become less complex, it will become more invisible. Complexity will go back a step, retreat behind the screen. While this is no doubt positive for consumers, that very fact means that the computer is increasingly becoming only a consumer tool. Kittler has warned about the way in which PCs increasingly lock users out of their inner workings. Doesn't this mean more MyStagoguery, more dependence upon a cadre of initiate-priests?