More complex need not equal more difficult
I am horrified at the sight of people vomiting up
reactionary, unconsidered or plain wilfully ignorant
rhetoric about the iPad, especially when a
vanishingly small fraction of the world’s population
has actually seen one. To quote, um, myself: if anyone tells you that
the iPad “is” anything – especially if they tell
you that it “is just” anything – they’re a fool,
a cretin and an arsehole. Or, perhaps, merely a
bit egotistical, a bit unimaginative, or just
ever-so-slightly desirous of generating revenue
from the contextual advertising that accompanies
their masturbatory ramblings.
Two things strike me as sufficiently important (and sufficiently non-self-explanatory) to warrant my time to write and yours to read. The first is that while that part of the industry – hacks, devs, users, retailers and sundry analysts – which is possessed of adequate humility, imagination or integrity is quietly positing a future in which less time is spent using computers to tend to computers, Apple itself was peculiarly restrained in its stated vision for the iPad. We weren’t told that this was a new computing paradigm. We weren’t told that this was a shift from Old World to New World computing, regardless of how logical that shift might seem. I’ll entertain as plausible the idea that this was because the notion of telling people that ‘the Mac/PC is dead’ is too big to sell – especially to investors – or that, as it stands, Apple’s implementation of the iPhone OS ecosystem is simply too immature to serve as a convincing replacement even for those relatively simple tasks it excels at. But still: it’s notable that it’s the industry that is even debating the future of the personal computer paradigm, not Apple. (Caveat: …at least publicly.)
The second point develops
the argument so well-articulated by Steven
Frank. (Not familiar with it? It’s impossible to
summarise without ripping out the nuance, and
that does the thesis a disservice; make time to
read it. It’s not dazzlingly
original – in a good way; it’s a statement of
fact, and facts have only a limited quotient of
original – but the case is better made than I’ve
seen most people achieve.) And here’s my
flourish, my addition to the discussion: for
once, technology is decreasing in complexity
from the user’s perspective, while increasing in
complexity in the absolute. My example of
this is a button in the National Rail application for the
iPhone, marked ’Next train home’. Tap this
button, and the iPhone works out where it is,
where the nearest station is and, knowing which
is your ‘home’ station, tells you what time the
next train you can get is, displaying delays on
services as it does so. Think: that’s a
colossally complex task. Monumental. Herculean.
Involves billions of pounds of infrastructure,
enormous gouts of code, uncountable man-hours of
work on making sure that this cog works
with that cog; alloying just staggering
– and staggeringly-different – technologies
together.
There has always been a drive to make the complex accessible, to abstract away the mind-buggeringly difficult, and present just the bits we need to see in order to control. (I know how an internal combustion engine works in theory – couldn’t build one – but I can make a car go by pressing the accelerator. I know how the internet works – couldn’t build it – but I can buy a new lens for my SLR by going to Amazon.) The National Rail app, however, is emblematic of a tempo change in this push towards accessibility, usefulness and merit.
I would be disappointed if, by the time I retire, even this use of highly complex and interdependent technology to present a simple, human-centric – ‘human-parsable’ – result is seen as anything other than dreadfully old-fashioned, yet I say again: if the iPad represents a future in which the highly complex isn’t merely made less so, but is mashed up with other stuff to create usefulness far in excess of its constituent parts, then that’s something worth feeling happy about.
Further reading
Steven Frank: I need to talk to you about computers
Fraser Speirs: Future Shock
My post at MacFormat: Is the iPad a computer or a peripheral?
Tom Royal: There are two ways to reduce complexity
John Gruber: Various iPad thoughts (Aaaargh, car analogy!)
Craig Hockenberry: iPad liberation (Describes what I usually refer to as ‘sitting forward’ and ’sitting back’ computing. Has resonance for me as a journalist, as I suspect that one of the reasons e-mags remain niche is because the dominant paradigm for computers is ’sitting forward’, requiring thought and attention, and reeking of work.)
Two things strike me as sufficiently important (and sufficiently non-self-explanatory) to warrant my time to write and yours to read. The first is that while that part of the industry – hacks, devs, users, retailers and sundry analysts – which is possessed of adequate humility, imagination or integrity is quietly positing a future in which less time is spent using computers to tend to computers, Apple itself was peculiarly restrained in its stated vision for the iPad. We weren’t told that this was a new computing paradigm. We weren’t told that this was a shift from Old World to New World computing, regardless of how logical that shift might seem. I’ll entertain as plausible the idea that this was because the notion of telling people that ‘the Mac/PC is dead’ is too big to sell – especially to investors – or that, as it stands, Apple’s implementation of the iPhone OS ecosystem is simply too immature to serve as a convincing replacement even for those relatively simple tasks it excels at. But still: it’s notable that it’s the industry that is even debating the future of the personal computer paradigm, not Apple. (Caveat: …at least publicly.)
There has always been a drive to make the complex accessible, to abstract away the mind-buggeringly difficult, and present just the bits we need to see in order to control. (I know how an internal combustion engine works in theory – couldn’t build one – but I can make a car go by pressing the accelerator. I know how the internet works – couldn’t build it – but I can buy a new lens for my SLR by going to Amazon.) The National Rail app, however, is emblematic of a tempo change in this push towards accessibility, usefulness and merit.
I would be disappointed if, by the time I retire, even this use of highly complex and interdependent technology to present a simple, human-centric – ‘human-parsable’ – result is seen as anything other than dreadfully old-fashioned, yet I say again: if the iPad represents a future in which the highly complex isn’t merely made less so, but is mashed up with other stuff to create usefulness far in excess of its constituent parts, then that’s something worth feeling happy about.
Further reading
Steven Frank: I need to talk to you about computers
Fraser Speirs: Future Shock
My post at MacFormat: Is the iPad a computer or a peripheral?
Tom Royal: There are two ways to reduce complexity
John Gruber: Various iPad thoughts (Aaaargh, car analogy!)
Craig Hockenberry: iPad liberation (Describes what I usually refer to as ‘sitting forward’ and ’sitting back’ computing. Has resonance for me as a journalist, as I suspect that one of the reasons e-mags remain niche is because the dominant paradigm for computers is ’sitting forward’, requiring thought and attention, and reeking of work.)
