Design Hardware/Software for Global Civil Society

-cman- writes "White box builders and Gnome hackers take note! With the announcement of various oxymoronic "trusted computing" initiatives in recent week, Bruce Sterling, self-appointed Pope-Emperor of the Viridian Design Movement has announced a new design contest to design a '...genuinely trustable, cheap, well-designed, rugged, sexy, accessible computer system that is owned, manufactured and operated for, well, Global Civil Society.'" I'll buy one.

Comments

Global Civil Society ?

[Chillblaine]

Damn the box let's just try get the "Global Civil Society" first.

Isn't this what standards bodies are for?

[gatekeep]

It seems to me that if these sorts of 'security systems' are meant to make the exchange of data between computers secure, there's already a lot of standards bodies which should be up to to the task of establishing an alternative to the MS-centric Palladium.

IEEE, IETF, even the Liberty Alliance could put together a competing system.

The key here is that any proposed security standard needs to be

• Vendor Neutral
  
• International
  
• Respected by the industry
  
• Respected by a majority of the world's nations.
  

Anything less than this *WILL* fail on a global market. MS probably has a shot at controlling the US PC market if the government and their anti-trust proceedings don't bitch slap them

Re:Isn't this what standards bodies are for?

[gatekeep]

I agree almost entirely with everything you've said.

The way I see this shaking out is similar to the .net vs. liberty alliance thing. Microsoft will come up with their Standard(tm) way of doing something. Other companies will realize the intent is good (for them, not necessarily for consumers) but will be hesitant to trust MS and give them ownership of something so powerful and key to the future direction of the PC market. A few of these like minded companies will band together and create their own rival Standard(tm) way of doing the same thing. More companies will follow and pretty much Microsoft either backs off or singlehandedly faces the rest of the marketplace.

While MS is clearly a monolithic company, they still can't really fight the hardware makers if they all decide to band together against MS. MS is still very much at the mercy of many companies. Intel and AMD acceptance is key to MS' success. HP/Compaq, IBM, Dell, etc. also have a pretty large say in the direction of the PC market. While Microsoft has a huge hand in guiding the future direction of the PC market, a determined group of hardware manufacturers can still stop them or steer a different course. Hopefully that's how things play out here.

Perhaps nobody will build them?

[capt.Hij]

When you open it up, it shouldn't display the creepy logo and suspicious agenda of "Microsoft, Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel" or any of those "trusted computing" jaspers.

So somebody is supposed to build computers for everybody on the whole planet, but that somebody shouldn't be big enough that they are capable of doing such a thing? Maybe we should put some plans on our desks and let the computer gnomes build them overnight?

PC

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is clearly the x86 PC, I guess this competition is the same as this one?.

This is doable

[Junks Jerzey]

We've all gotten very used to thinking that "computers == 1970s mainframe shrunk to desktop size," in that we deal with fragile hardware, fragile drivers, fragile applications, overly complex systems, and having to become system administrators. That's not how it has to be.

Some computer systems are solidly reliable, but we don't think of them as computers. We call them consoles and PDAs. But technology has advanced so much that we could easily have a PDA with more horsepower in it than was used at Boeing to design the 777, or what animators had on their desks when working on Toy Story. It's a matter of breaking free from thinking of computers as generic "PC"s running generic operating systems. Smaller is better in this case. How much performance and time do we waste just to keep running the same generic, "modern" systems: Linux, Windows, MacOS. They're all the same, and they're all missing the point.

Re:This is doable

[kaisyain]

No, PDAs and consoles are solidly reliable because they don't offer you any choice. Decide that your Palm III doesn't have enough space for all of your contacts anymore and you can't just put in a new 120 GB Maxtor hard drive. Realize that your NES doesn't support T&L, you can't just slot in a new video card.

You could say that some people don't need all of the flexibility that a PC offers. The problem is finding a subset that satisfies enough people to make a profit. PDAs and consoles are one particular subset that (occasionally) make a profit.

But look at the number of net appliances that have come and gone: They failed for a reason, not completely related to marketing.

Word and Excel have four billion functions because someone finds every single one of those functions useful. What is the point of a PDA having a gigahertz processor if all you do is manage contacts on it?

Maybe These Box Builders...

[istartedi]

...will wake up one day and realize they are just technicians not world saviors. Of course, actors and musicians would have to do that first. I'm not holding my breath.

Global Civility?

[carlos_benj]

Whaaa??? Hardware/Software to make people civil? Globally? Can anyone else hear the echoes bouncing off the empty walls at slashdot?

Design Spec nightmare

[gclef]

Okay, so what exactly are the specs of this platform he's asking for?

1) "genuinely trustable, cheap, well-designed, rugged, sexy, accessible."

good, cheap, fast. Pick two. Seriously, rugged, cheap and accessible (presuming he means easy to use) are about the only things in this section that are actually design requirements. The "genuinely trustable" we'll look at below in the "open specifications" comment. "Well-designed" and "sexy" are not design specifications, as much as marketing pre-planning.

2) "a primarily political and social computer"

ummm....right. This isn't a design spec, it's...well....pointless, actually. We'll ignore it.

3) No corporate or national logos.

Okay. This is a valid design requirement, but probably an impossible one.

4) "The software and communications protocols in this device should be transparent. Honest. Aboveboard. Public. Public-spirited. Fair. Inclusive. Multi-culti. Legitimate. This Is What Democracy Looks Like. All that stuff that computer hardware and software never, ever is"

Right. The IEEE and the IETF are secretly planning to take over the world. Just you wait. and don't get me started on JEDEC. They never take input from the community. This is a design spec, but an insane one.

There's no way. You would, in effect, have to re-design every part of the computer to manage this. This includes a different card spec (PCI and AGP are apparently not multi-culti enough), a different CPU (they display corporate logos, after all), different BIOS (corporate logos again), etc. You would have re-design the entire computer, ignoring all existing specs. This is crazy.

This isn't possible, and here is why..

[beldraen]

I'm sorry, but this is logistically impossible. Let's take this apart:

What we need is a genuinely trustable, cheap, well-designed, rugged, sexy, accessible computer system that is owned, manufactured and operated for, well, Global Civil Society.

What is trustable? If the computer is trusted by the owner then that means the owner must have full control in order to guarantee no shoddy behavior is going on. However, this is the exact antithesis of what RIAA wants because it wants full control to do the exact same thing-- to guarantee no shoddy behavior is going on. In system's design, all of the above terms are meaningless. Everyone has different opinions on exactly what these terms mean which is why I have learned to steer well clear of them. To me, sexy is code that is well documented, simple, and broken into intelligent behavioral pieces. I also know people who think sexy is that all sections of code larger than 50 lines must be broken into a separate procedure. To me, that's a maintenance nightmare and hardly sexy.

The real issue, something that I've been arguing for a long time is that piracy is the natural balance to capitalism. When the demand for a product outweighs what the public feels as fair for the product, then fewer people feel bound to honoring a purchase. Unfortunately, there is a law of numbers in capitalism and the number of people who do not have the expertise to make a wise decision when purchasing technical goods versus those who do are far greater in number. Thus, regardless of the number of better alternatives out there, people will buy in the way they are used to, which currently is Microsoft. The only way to prevent what is going to happen is to educate enough of the public to make Microsoft believe it would not be financially wise to attempt to go that route. The advent of XP being rent-able was foiled when enough consumer backlashes were heard. But, in some form, XP was going to sell because they are the megacorp. And, as long as we allow megacorps, they are going to do whatever it is that will give the most dollars. They are always going to attempt to strive for that perfect goal of performing no effort and collecting money for it. Microsoft figured this out a long time back. They just want to make sure for every transaction that occurs, they get paid to allow it to happen. And, we all put them there because we, as a whole, have always voted by buying the cheapest. Now, the cost is always going to be the threat of being finally utterly controlled by one of those megacorps.

in- and ex-ternals of such a beast

[timothy]

(Going on the idea that this fantasy system will be a laptop, though that may be reading too much into it.)

1) the keyboard can't suck. The best keyboards on laptops (IMO) are the ones found on IBM ThinkPads, though there is some competion from Toshiba. Most laptop keyboards are are not only awful feeling to begin with, they rapidly get worse and stay worse. Unless your entry has to be ultra-ultra lightweight, please consider putting a few justified ounces into a keyboard. Make it something that will be worth typing on in 10 years, like my IBM model M keyboard is.

Also, the keys should be tilted to a sane angle for typing, not a big rectangle of keys. Only a few laptops have ever tried escaping the wrist-killer of normal laptop keyboard layouts. No matter what keyboard layout one ends up using (QUERTY, Dvorak or something else), your hands still need a break.

2) The pointer can't suck, and they all do :) (This is going with the idea that it *would* need one ... maybe not.)

IBM-style pointers are my favorite, but they are probably too troublesome and breakage prone: how about an optical trackpad with a replaceable window in the event that the original is scratched / scuffed beyond use? Or an embedded trackball like in the old Powerbooks, but with an optical ball as in current desktop trackballs?

3) Modularity, ports and jacks are all-important.

Realize (or at least grudgingly hypothesize) that some or all of the computer is going to break, and view it as an inherently leaky system. The screen will get pierced by an arrow while you're traipsing through the rain forest, or the hot foreign-aid worker you're respectfully dating will cause you to pour coffee on the keyboard, or the pointer will just decide to go on permanent vacation, or a purse-snatcher will leave you holding only the detachable screen. Gone.

There must be ways built in for the thing to go on functioning at least a little bit, and if at all possible to be field repaired.

Whatever the screen configuration ends up being (conventional clamshell? web-pad? little eye-piece?), it needs to be replaceable with no more than a (makeshift, flat-head) screwdriver and some human fingers.

Provision should be built-in to use number bad or other keyboard part as an alternate pointer controller if the main one busts.

Re ports: USB / USB2 seem like good choices these days for a low-cost machine. I think it would be smarter to provide a bunch of USB(2) ports than try to provide the whole range of ethernet, firewire, serial, parallel, etc etc. Let that be taken care of by emulation and adapters, and encourage everything in the world that could grow a USB port to do so. Has some downside, but simplicity and interchangeability is important. A low-cost computer could be a micro-ISP if it had 8 USB modems and an ethernet adapter hooked to it's 4 USB ports via a couple of powered USB hubs. Or a weather station. Or a Whoooznitz Whutzall Thingamajibber. Point is, modularity should trump built-in featuritus.

Now forget I just said that and let me hypnotize you with this idea: it should have a built-in camera. Randy Waterhouse had one in Cryptonomicon, but despite this obvious hint to the hardware industry, very few laptops really have a camera, and the one on the Sony Picturebooks isn't the dirt-cheap pinhole variety of Randy's.

4) Built in software, in two parts:

a) Really, any open-source operating system would work. Some variety of either BSD or Linux seems the obvious choice right now, either would work fine. Or some other variant, so long as the software's license is open enough to enocourage unhindered distribution, modification.

b) Lots of knowledge on the hard drive.

Why do hard drives come blank? Who knows, but should they? Remember, today's "tiny" hard drive holds more written knowledge than the world possessed in sum not long ago.

I'd like to see on this thing a copy of:

- a good serious world almanac
- a good non-serious or at least non-traditional world almanac like the HG2G or similar
- lots of maps
- a simple word-for-word translator with dictionaries for many languages, so documents could be at least looked at on a very coarse level even if you don't know the language.
- the U.S. Constitution (and heck, the communist manifesto, as a "see also" reference)
- diagrams for lots of things.
- classic literature of several languages

5) Other concerns

- must be workable on world current, at low power. Look at the capabilities of today's 800MHz transmeta chip, or 400MHz Xscale, and aim lower.

- should be built with solar in mind. Casing should have attachment points for a solar panel or two. Low-power LEDs to indicate charge level. Agressive power-throttling.

Phew.

timothy