If I Were King of the Forrrrrest

By Wayne Maruna

I watched a portion of The Wizard of Oz on television over the holidays.  The title of this article comes from the song sung by Bert Lahr in his role of the Cowardly Lion.  He muses how things would be different if he had sufficient courage to rule as king.  (He kind of rolls his ‘R’s with a tremolo effect as he sings ‘forest’ in case you were wondering.) Since I tend to translate everything into Computerese, it got me to thinking how different our computing experience might be if I were allowed to dictate how computers work.

            I realized that this was being mighty presumptuous on my part since companies like Microsoft, Intel, Apple, HP, Dell, and others were paying packs of marketing geniuses big money to sit around and do this very same thing.  How could I compete with such visionaries?  So I enlisted the aid of those everyday users I could reach out to: I sent emails to Taberna’s TabMail distribution list (over 500 recipients) and also to the 300+ members of the New Bern Computer User Group and sat back and waited for the flood of replies.

            For the most part I’m still waiting. Yes I got replies, but not many relative to nearly 800+ recipients, and none that I would call visionary – not even my own.  Either people are pretty content with their computing experience today – something I really doubt – or they have me on their blacklist of email addresses and did not get or read my email.  More likely they did not care enough to respond or had more pressing matters to attend to.

            My soliciting email included a couple of my own hardly-new ideas to grease the wheels of thought.  Instant-on is probably the thing I’d like most.  I’m told the Apple iPad has this.  The coming operating system from Google called Chrome is said to be pursuing this.  It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard.  If the iPad can do it, why can’t all PCs?  Yes, you can try and employ hibernation or sleep mode, but it’s not quite the same, plus hibernation can be problematic on some machines.

            I also reiterated the desire for community-wide wi-fi, sometimes called municipal wi-fi or simply muni-fi.  Anyone with a wireless adapter could access email and the internet from anywhere in the covered community.  There have been attempts at this but typically plans far exceed fruition.  As is most often the case, it comes down to cost, benefit, who foots the bill and how.  I suspect this will continue to be an elusive dream without some watershed change in technology.  For more info, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_wireless_network

            In my November 2010 Tribune article, I included a forecast that suggested the future PC might look like a cell phone which could connect to peripherals like monitors and keyboards.  You’d carry your computer around in your pocket and look for a place to access input and output devices, possibly wirelessly.  The first glimpse of that future was unveiled at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in January when Motorola announced its Atrix device.  Details can be found here: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=7275&tag=nl.e101

By and large people who responded to my solicitation did not suggest Star-Trek type technology with holographic videos.  Typical comments included:

“I want more computer knowledge.” 

“I want to Know without the drudgery of actually Learning” (the elusive knowledge infusion app.)

“Make a computer that is intuitive, where proper usage does not require detailed instruction and explanation from the junior high kid next door.”

“Give me a way to type in my question and get the exact answer I am looking for without wading through a bazillion marginally related items” – SuperGoogle, if you please.

“I want the ability to do a true one-button backup (or better yet make data storage fail-proof).”

“Give me new computers without shovelware that I need to sort through and delete.”

“Make laptop screens height-adjustable”

“Let me open documents that I receive in emails without having to own the software that created the documents.”

“Make my computer user-configurable where I can click on the capabilities I want and need, and hide the rest.”

“Cut out the redundancy.  I don’t need 12 ways to do the same thing.  Just give me one good way and make it easy.”

“Make the hackers and virus writers go away.”

            The fulfillment of some of these wishes already exists in one form or another.  A program called QuickView that I have used since 2002 allows me to open documents created in programs I don’t have.  One can, at a price, buy custom computers without shovelware and with only those programs you want.  There are web-based backup solutions that can work in the background or at night (Carbonite, Mozy).  Linux and Apple operating systems are most often run without fear of virus infection.  Knowledge infusion app?  Sorry, not yet.

I was surprised to find that when you boiled it all down, what people wanted was not 22nd century technology.  They wanted simplicity and ease of use.  I’ve used the toaster analogy before, but really, we all know how to use a toaster from an early age.  We don’t send people to toaster class.  We want our computers to work like toasters.  Simple.  Intuitive.

Computers can do amazing things, and I’m certainly not selling short the underlying technology that allows these modern miracles to be so ubiquitous. And I grant that toasters do one thing only while computers are multi-purpose.  But perhaps its time we devote fewer resources to advancing the technological capabilities and instead focus on ease of use.

You’ve heard the commercials for the company BASF:  “At BASF, we don't make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better”. Clearly many computer users want to hear some company advertise:  “We don’t just make computers.  We make computers easy to use.”