I know this is an astoundingly perverse thought, but what happens if everyone agrees with a given notion of what their babies should be like? What happens if, by an unspoken consensus, everyone builds generally pliant, pretty, semi-smart, fully-inside-the-box kids?
What happens when, in a century or so when everyone is the same, a mutated spark of creativity catches fire in the mind of a prospective parent?
"Doc? Uh...I know this is a bit unusual, but since the Parent's Right to Offspring Specification Act of 2024 gives me the right to completely control how you spec out this kid, I have some special requests. Make him bigger, meaner, crueler, more ambitious than anything ever done before. Kill the conscience completely. Average intelligence is ok, but compassion is a complete no-no."
On the tube home, said parent-to-be then uses their implanted commlink to call their spouses: "Robin? Pat? I did it! Our kid is gonna rule the world!"
Since I grew up in a rural area many decades ago, I could have given, by the age of 16 or so, heartily positive responses to a number of additional questions such as: Have you ever used high explosives for recreational purposes? Have you ever taken more than one gun to school? or two knives? Can you detail, from experience, the effects of.50 Browning machine gun rounds on car bodies, engine blocks, and old refrigerators? Were you the one who carved the words "Lisa practices on telephone poles" into a table in the library? And here I thought I was a normal kid. I wonder what they'd do with me today?
I just got through putting a division of users (about 300) on a new, integrated work system. Besides all the proprietary software, we have WP5.1 for Unix, Lotus 123 (I could swear those boxes said ver. 1) and Z-Mail all running on top of SCO OS 5.0.4. Everything, from the servers all the way down to the laptops that go out into the field, is 100% Unix.
Across the way, we have another division that's in the process of putting about 600 people on an all-NT network with proprietary software for their core job functions and MS Office for "productivity" apps.
The contrast between the two approaches is amazing. Both sides are engaging in good-natured verbal sniping at the other, but the differences are pretty basic.
1. Our far-flung offices, some with very poor bandwidth back to headquarters, are much better served by our text-based applications. Our text-only email, for example, doesn't choke and die because some secretary decided to send a 50-page PowerPoint presentation to all employees.
2. My sysadmin counterparts on the NT side are more than a little envious of the fact that I can rlogin to just about anything and fix whatever's screwed up. Yeah, they have pretty graphical tools that supposedly enable them to do the same thing. But those tools are so slow that they tend to give up in frustration and tell the users "I'll handle it next time I'm out there." My people don't have to wait.
3. Training has turned out to be a big deal. Both sides have users who run the gamut from self-styled hackers to total keyboard incompetents. Our guys have to learn to open multiple sessions and read the bottom-of-the-screen prompts to figure out what function key should be pressed. The multiple-sessions thing threw some of them for a while, but they've managed to handle it. The NT folks, on the other hand, are having lots of problems with users opening multiple applications without realizing it or keeping track of them. Worse, they often open multiple copies of some of our proprietary apps that simply don't like being run that way. Many of these people are sufficiently unaccustomed to a mouse that they can't play a game of solitaire, yet they are now expected to use the thing to make a living. Most are handling it, but some are a total nightmare. I have far fewer problems on my side of the house.
4. Our computers in the field just seem to work. No muss. No fuss. They get their jobs done and don't complain much. The NT users, otoh, have to deal with occasional strange error messages and lock-ups that confound and irritate them.
5. The biggest difference, though, is in the attitude of my users. When they first found out they were getting all those "old, obsolete programs," they were openly angry. "Why should we go BACKWARDS in technology?" was their rallying cry. They were openly contemptuous of the decision to implement in this way. They demanded to know what idiot was forcing them to give up their pretty point-and-click interfaces. Now that they've worked with the system, though, attitudes are different. Their stuff just works. They don't have to worry about whether they're going to get some weird blue screen or the cursor is going to disappear or a virus is going tear through their address book. They are simply able to sign on in the morning, do their work, and sign off in the evening. No big deal.
Next project: Put up a Lynx server so I can add intranet access to their telnet menu. And when I do, creating fast, useful net access for my people while the NT guys waste man-years waiting for graphics-intensive screens to re-draw, my people will again be forced to conclude that software that works is preferable to software that looks pretty.
I think the original question is a good one. Text-based apps that have been abandoned by the mass-market could make a notable if not wide-spread comeback if they're presented right.
As the maintainer of a government web site, I can only say how much I agree. Those repeatedly posting that the web is a visual medium are just flat wrong. The web (and to a greater extent and more importantly the internet) ain't about pretty pictures or fonts only the designer of them can read. It's about ideas. It's a mechanism for communicating those ideas. And anyone who says "They're blind! Let 'em eat cake!" is not only heartless but ignorant. It is simply unacceptable for society to take a group of people who "see" the world in a different way and shut them out. Isn't that what all the Hellmouth uproar has been about? Saying "Blind people? Fuck 'em!" is the moral equivalent of saying "Plays Doom? Put 'em in isolation!" Neither condition is a good reason to cut people off from the rest of the world. And folks, I believe that the 'net has reached a level of importance, of validity, and of ubiquity that cutting people off from the online world is nearly the equivalent of shutting them out of the physical world.
I know my blind users appreciate the fact that I'm not trying to win any design contests. I'm just trying to communicate. Just like any other Any Browser proponent.:-)
As for the nuts and bolts, it's not all that hard to make sites useful to everyone. Check out the IRS web site for a look at a huge site that works in text only mode. And if you're open to making the sites you design more useful, try the basic information available from the Department of Justice page on this topic. There's even a fine page on the topic from the General Services Administration. Just because they're government sites doesn't mean they're bad.
On the flip side, of course, I think the folks filing this suit could have chosen a better place to try to make available for the blind than AOL. Suppose they get everything they ask for and AOL becomes totally accessible? What then? A whole new group of folks gets to look at the service and decide that it's crap?
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I know this is an astoundingly perverse thought, but what happens if everyone agrees with a given notion of what their babies should be like? What happens if, by an unspoken consensus, everyone builds generally pliant, pretty, semi-smart, fully-inside-the-box kids?
What happens when, in a century or so when everyone is the same, a mutated spark of creativity catches fire in the mind of a prospective parent?
"Doc? Uh...I know this is a bit unusual, but since the Parent's Right to Offspring Specification Act of 2024 gives me the right to completely control how you spec out this kid, I have some special requests. Make him bigger, meaner, crueler, more ambitious than anything ever done before. Kill the conscience completely. Average intelligence is ok, but compassion is a complete no-no."
On the tube home, said parent-to-be then uses their implanted commlink to call their spouses: "Robin? Pat? I did it! Our kid is gonna rule the world!"
Brrr. Kinda gives me the chills.
Since I grew up in a rural area many decades ago, I could have given, by the age of 16 or so, heartily positive responses to a number of additional questions such as: .50 Browning machine gun rounds on car bodies, engine blocks, and old refrigerators?
Have you ever used high explosives for recreational purposes?
Have you ever taken more than one gun to school? or two knives?
Can you detail, from experience, the effects of
Were you the one who carved the words "Lisa practices on telephone poles" into a table in the library?
And here I thought I was a normal kid. I wonder what they'd do with me today?
I just got through putting a division of users (about 300) on a new, integrated work system. Besides all the proprietary software, we have WP5.1 for Unix, Lotus 123 (I could swear those boxes said ver. 1) and Z-Mail all running on top of SCO OS 5.0.4. Everything, from the servers all the way down to the laptops that go out into the field, is 100% Unix.
Across the way, we have another division that's in the process of putting about 600 people on an all-NT network with proprietary software for their core job functions and MS Office for "productivity" apps.
The contrast between the two approaches is amazing. Both sides are engaging in good-natured verbal sniping at the other, but the differences are pretty basic.
1. Our far-flung offices, some with very poor bandwidth back to headquarters, are much better served by our text-based applications. Our text-only email, for example, doesn't choke and die because some secretary decided to send a 50-page PowerPoint presentation to all employees.
2. My sysadmin counterparts on the NT side are more than a little envious of the fact that I can rlogin to just about anything and fix whatever's screwed up. Yeah, they have pretty graphical tools that supposedly enable them to do the same thing. But those tools are so slow that they tend to give up in frustration and tell the users "I'll handle it next time I'm out there." My people don't have to wait.
3. Training has turned out to be a big deal. Both sides have users who run the gamut from self-styled hackers to total keyboard incompetents. Our guys have to learn to open multiple sessions and read the bottom-of-the-screen prompts to figure out what function key should be pressed. The multiple-sessions thing threw some of them for a while, but they've managed to handle it. The NT folks, on the other hand, are having lots of problems with users opening multiple applications without realizing it or keeping track of them. Worse, they often open multiple copies of some of our proprietary apps that simply don't like being run that way. Many of these people are sufficiently unaccustomed to a mouse that they can't play a game of solitaire, yet they are now expected to use the thing to make a living. Most are handling it, but some are a total nightmare. I have far fewer problems on my side of the house.
4. Our computers in the field just seem to work. No muss. No fuss. They get their jobs done and don't complain much. The NT users, otoh, have to deal with occasional strange error messages and lock-ups that confound and irritate them.
5. The biggest difference, though, is in the attitude of my users. When they first found out they were getting all those "old, obsolete programs," they were openly angry. "Why should we go BACKWARDS in technology?" was their rallying cry. They were openly contemptuous of the decision to implement in this way. They demanded to know what idiot was forcing them to give up their pretty point-and-click interfaces. Now that they've worked with the system, though, attitudes are different. Their stuff just works. They don't have to worry about whether they're going to get some weird blue screen or the cursor is going to disappear or a virus is going tear through their address book. They are simply able to sign on in the morning, do their work, and sign off in the evening. No big deal.
Next project: Put up a Lynx server so I can add intranet access to their telnet menu. And when I do, creating fast, useful net access for my people while the NT guys waste man-years waiting for graphics-intensive screens to re-draw, my people will again be forced to conclude that software that works is preferable to software that looks pretty.
I think the original question is a good one. Text-based apps that have been abandoned by the mass-market could make a notable if not wide-spread comeback if they're presented right.
As the maintainer of a government web site, I can only say how much I agree. Those repeatedly posting that the web is a visual medium are just flat wrong. The web (and to a greater extent and more importantly the internet) ain't about pretty pictures or fonts only the designer of them can read. It's about ideas. It's a mechanism for communicating those ideas. And anyone who says "They're blind! Let 'em eat cake!" is not only heartless but ignorant. It is simply unacceptable for society to take a group of people who "see" the world in a different way and shut them out. Isn't that what all the Hellmouth uproar has been about? Saying "Blind people? Fuck 'em!" is the moral equivalent of saying "Plays Doom? Put 'em in isolation!" Neither condition is a good reason to cut people off from the rest of the world. And folks, I believe that the 'net has reached a level of importance, of validity, and of ubiquity that cutting people off from the online world is nearly the equivalent of shutting them out of the physical world.
I know my blind users appreciate the fact that I'm not trying to win any design contests. I'm just trying to communicate. Just like any other Any Browser proponent. :-)
As for the nuts and bolts, it's not all that hard to make sites useful to everyone. Check out the IRS web site for a look at a huge site that works in text only mode. And if you're open to making the sites you design more useful, try the basic information available from the Department of Justice page on this topic. There's even a fine page on the topic from the General Services Administration. Just because they're government sites doesn't mean they're bad.
On the flip side, of course, I think the folks filing this suit could have chosen a better place to try to make available for the blind than AOL. Suppose they get everything they ask for and AOL becomes totally accessible? What then? A whole new group of folks gets to look at the service and decide that it's crap?
:-)
Sorry. I couldn't resist the cheap shot.