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Pointless IT Innovations Considered Harmful
Makarand writes "According to a comment column in the guardian innovations in IT are most often simply more trouble than they are worth. Most innovations in IT today are platform specific and are easy to
come up with in the computing fields. Innovating gets easier if the platform sticks around
for a long time. These innovations accrue incompatibilities making it difficult for users to switch platforms and absorb the costs of switching to a new platform. Users will not switch to
a competitor's product if they believe that their platform will be later updated to deliver the same benefits."
You never know when you're going to stumble across the next big revolutionary idea.
If added value is subtracted value in the scheme of big business it's certain why most of the big media outlets are still shaking in their boots about the internet. Not only does Sony Music have to keep up whatever dubious value it promotes in it's acts, but it has to compete with the innovations of a still blossoming media sector. Every new innovation on a computer is something else to distract a person from the lack of value on a cd?
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
You can deviate, but only if you don't force people to throw away everything else to get there.
/. has been prone to do.
There's also the issue of introducing innovations that "pollute" the standard in an attempt to hijack it, as one company often discussed on
Im sick of vendors thinking that it is ok to re-invent everything every couple of years and force all your customers to adapt to it.
Im even more sick of watching silly companies spend the re-structuring costs because they believe all the hype thats said.
Some IT departments spend all their time upgrading to get the latest versions of everything working together instead of just using what they have to its full potential.
Thats ridiculous.. just pick a technology and do something with it!
If a particular technology works for - use it! Dont let the marketing hype disuade you from using it.
Its more important to get your project done than it is to develop it on whatever someone tells you is the latest greatest technology.
-- NeTMoNGeR
Most innovations should come in small steps rather than large newly redesigned leaps. Figure if, say Ford discovered 50 new technologies in cars over the next ten years but didn't put a single one of them in their models until enough accrued to 'justify' changing the models.... you'd get a probably get a piece of shit that can't last 100,000 miles in ten years with all that suddenly newly built in stuff that hasn't been time tested. I don't know about you, but a car from 2000s most likely vastly improved than from the 1980s (even if the same model), and if you ever driven a car from the 1960s or 1950s.... cool to look at... but to drive daily? Blech.
The cycle of small constant innovations is better than giant leaps forward, imnsho.
But I have to say one thing on software, most 'innovations' are purely feature bloat that 99% of users probably don't use but it lets the company print on their marketing 'hey, we have this new feature foo and it increases productivity by 1000000000000000000000000000000000%!'
The issues that actually drive the corporate agenda in the IT industries therefore include: how do we develop something that makes it hard for users to switch to a competitor, or for a competitor to clone us and compete with us? Their weapons include patents, copyrights and other intellectual property rights, and especially the proprietary control of the hardware, software and peripheral interfaces that affect compatibility.
Whereas in the world of Open Source the impetus is to make software that works well with other software.
The simple solution to this problem? Demand that your vendors implement solutions that run on Linux. Its a quick cure to being "locked in" to a particular hardware platform or individual piece of software.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
This isn't innovation; this is marketing attempting to create a demand to cover the costs of developing a new technology. GM did this in the early part of the 20th century. The product drove the market demand. WHen GM developed the GTO in the '60s, the initial plan was only to produce 5000 of them. However, when they were flooded with 15,000 orders, suddenly the market demand was driving the product development. Innovation needs to provide INCREASED value to the customer at the same or REDUCED cost. "Innovation" that is expensive for users isn't innovation at all. It's creating a sustained revenue stream for the company developing the technology at the EXPENSE of the user.
Now, the MCA developed by IBM may have been innovative on a purely technical basis; however, to adopt this innovation it would have cost the end users a lot of money in terms of replacing already existing hardware that was incompatible with the new architecture. If the MCA had been made compatible with existing hardware, then it would have been innovative. (Risking exposing my hardware design naiveness here, but that's OK)
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Cars would be cheaper if they built the same car year after year, then changed models once enough aggregate advances have been made.
Are you sure about this? Certainly continuous processes of small incrimental changes are much cheaper than bringing out fully tested massive overhauls in manufacturing and in software.
follow this yearly cycle of 'improvement'.
I suggest you get a used car which is 20 years old and try it out. The improvements are not fake; just because the car industry doesn't move at the same speed as the computer industry doesn't mean they aren't improvements being made.
If we could start again from scratch, with hindsight, we might well decide to adopt the MCA bus, or something similar. Since we are not starting from scratch, we have to consider the switching costs.
PCI anyone? MCA failed because IBM made it too expensive relative to the hoads of imported clones that soon swamped the market. Yet CERN made a better bus and it was adopted under reasonable use terms. The more open standard won.
One of the many reasons that Apple lost the desktop wars was the conclusion arrived at by every rational person: that Apple was bound to lose. One day,
Apple is dying, he says. Right. I can't think of a better computer for most people to own. But that pales in comparison to the finishing touch:
One day, Microsoft could face a similar problem [that Apple supposedly suffered] with GNU/Linux. So not only must it maintain Windows' dominance, it has to maintain the perception of future dominance. In this case, of course, the answer is Microsoft.net.
Of course! Now I see the answer, all of the illogical strings above have tied my thoughts into a knot, but M$.NOT will set me free. I am free of fear and confusion knowing that M$ Office will alaways predominate, that my platoform performance and security is much less important than conforming so I don't look foolish. Yes, free from fear, uncertianty and doubt. I am a rational person and now know that market lock in is more important than standards. I'll just sit in my single window manager (AKA Windoze) prison and watch as warring companies smash all the ammenities so that nothing ever works right and what does work won't for long. I'll eat whatever new trash M$ throws into my cage.
What a laugh. It is so obvious that free code with it's transparency and freedom of modification solves all of the problems the author can dream up and that others suffered. Free software is modular, replacable and never dies. MCA runs just fine under linux and a 486 PS/2 makes an OK workstation that can effectively interoperate with more modern hardware. Under propriatory code, PS/2 is simply junk like most any older computer. Free software has been ported out to all maner of hardware and it's users can make use of anything out there, Arm to IA64. Because XFree86 is free and open, I can have any number of window managers, each vasty superior to M$, and they can all interoperate together. Even the silly painful world of M$ Office formats has been made less painful by Open Office, K Office and other free and open codes that can read that crap and extract the information out of it. It's amazing that the article started off with a very perceptive view of the evils of propriatory closed software development but ended up recomending no change except the adoption of some new M$ garbage.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I am not saying that technology has not changed at all in the last 20 years, I am merely stating that many of the changes from year to year are cosmetic, aside from the changes in the second model year where the company fixes mistakes in the manufacturing processes and quality issues. Each year machines are adapted for these changes. The taillight lenses become more rounded, a new mold had to be made for the lens and quite possibly the fender. This in turn had to be prototyped to ensure that the minor changes did not affect the structural integrety of the quarterpanel that the lens sits in. Machines have to be retooled for this, and for what? A fucking rounded taillight. All I am suggesting is that if we were more lenient in what we considered a 'new model', we might not have had car prices which increased over 20 times the rate of inflation. As for major improvements, like antilock brakes, airbags, etc., I am not implying to hold off on deploying these technologies, I am merely saying that a taillight lens or a different ground effects kit on a car merely to reach their quota of changes for the new model year.
I suggest you get a car that was one of the last off the 2002 production line and get one that was the first off the 2003 production line and tell me what vast improvements have been made in the 6 or so month span that these cars designs have been finalized.
I realize that the auto industry doesn't move as fast as the computer industry, but both suffer from artificial innovation. And if you can't make a better car in 20 years, you don't deserve to be in business.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
- Runs slower, much slower
- Has no keyboard shortcuts, HEAPS of mousing.
- Doesn't always work, requiring us to revert to the old system.
- Didn't solve a single problem that the existing system had. In fact, it introduced some.
- The client and server software is young and very buggy.
But we have to use it because:- We bought it.
- It's supposed to be better.
- As far as snr management is being told, it is better.
- Supposedly has plenty of benefits, though we didn't buy the package has these benefits.
The last six months at work have been a mess. Management have been saying we're just reluctant to learn, but we've been avoiding it to do better, faster and more accurate work.The system does do it's job a lot of the time, nearly most of the time, but the fact is, we had something better and simpler, and only took a step backwards. But because it cost hundreds of thousands, nobody (authoritive) has told the General Manager that it's a major cockup. Anybody who has get's reminded why it's (potentially) superior in so many ways, with claims that can't be backed up in any way, rather shot down emphatically by half-a-shifts work.