The Microsoft bashing is humorously silly, but I like the "arrange information in time" idea. --
KlausWuestefeld
Summary: Gelernter says we need to start storing information on our computers in terms of time.
Prevayler commands fit this metaphor precisely.
Here is the article:
Source: Feb 20, 2002 Kevin Maney article in USA Today
Title: Gelernter proposes alternative to Windows
Congress can stop the hearings. Someone has figured out who to blame for the Enron mess.
It's Microsoft.
This is the conclusion of Yale University's David Gelernter, the world's foremost, best-selling philosopher computer scientist. He might actually be the world's only philosopher computer scientist, but that shouldn't detract. He's very good at it.
So good at it, in fact, that Unabomber Ted Kaczynski tried to kill Gelernter to prevent him from making technology much better. A bomb ripped into Gelernter in 1993, injuring him severely. Gelernter lost a hand but survived.
Thursday, in a speech at the Internet World Wireless conference in New York, Gelernter will explain how Microsoft's Windows has screwed up the world's information, making it possible for Enron executives to crater the company.
The basics of Windows ? the desktop, windows for different documents and applications, files stored where you put them and sorted by application ? have become a way of life. Every personal computer works on those basics.
Most people don't even question them. It would be like questioning the bathroom. Why does it have a sink, a tub or shower and toilet? Might there be a better way to do it? Should there be something else in there, like a toaster oven? Who knows! You just use it.
Gelernter has a term for the information containers called windows. He calls them "virtual Tupperware."
When programmers of 30 or more years ago created the system of windows and files and folders, they were thinking about computers by using the metaphor of a desk and filing cabinet. You'd store your stuff in folders, clump similar folders (paper documents, photos, the Spiderman comic book collection) in the same drawer, and perhaps have multiple cabinets.
"This electronic file cabinet idea is obsolete," Gelernter argues ? and has argued since 1991, when he published his book Mirror Worlds. "It's furniture. We use software to turn computers into virtual furniture. It makes no sense. We're suffering from metaphor block."
What's the right metaphor?
Time.
Information can be stored in separate packages, Gelernter says. But it only means something when it's arranged in time ? in the context of a narrative.
Music is one example. Notes are information. They can be stored on a piece of sheet music. But the notes are only meaningful when they're played in order, across time. The notes mean even more when you know what happens before and after they're played.
If the music is played by my 8-year-old son in our living room, it means something different than if the same thing is played by Billy Joel in an arena.
Anyway, computers should handle information this way ? through time. A year ago, Gelernter and others formed a company, Mirror Worlds, to build software based on Gelernter's concepts.
Here's how those concepts work: Instead of windows on your screen, imagine small overlapping boxes that start in the upper left (the past) and cascade toward the lower right (the future). The top card in the lower right is the last item you touched. Could be a memo in Word, a Web page or an e-mail from Outlook.
Enough of each card is visible so you see everything you've touched in chronological order. Scroll back anywhere in time, or look forward to future appointments. Move the cursor over any card and click, and the item pops up, no matter what form it's in or where it's filed. The borders of applications and folders are removed, and instead, everything is arranged by time. The stream tells the story of your work.
"The question, 'Where did I put that piece of information?' ought to have one answer all the time," Gelernter says, noting that you can type in any word and get a chronological stream on that topic, searched across every application you use. "It's in the stream. Period."
Open this model up to a corporate network. Everything anyone at the company does gets stored on a computer server. Now, the software can tell any number of stories, depending on what level of access the user is granted.
You'd have access to your own story ? and co-workers wouldn't. If you're in sales, you could type in the name of a customer, and see the whole company's story of interaction with her ? sales calls, e-mail, orders. If you're the CEO, you could see the story of the company's operations ? everything everyone has done from any point in the past to the moment, and even to future appointments. It can't be done on today's systems.
If you're the FBI, you could get a court order to see the story of anything under investigation.
Windows systems save information in little packages. Know how hard it is to find an item in Windows if you can't remember what it's called or where you stored it? It's like trying to find a particular slice of cheese in Wisconsin.
"It's nearly impossible to get the story straight, even if you want to," Gelernter says.
So Windows did it. Bad guys could get away with bad things at Enron because Windows stored the relevant information in thousands of metaphorical burping plastic tubs. If good guys had been able to see the story of Enron's transactions, they would've spotted trouble and stopped it.
Hey, people in technology blame Microsoft for all their other ills. Why not this?
Kevin Maney covers technology for USA TODAY. His Technology column appears Wednesdays. E-mail Kevin at kmaney@usatoday.com .