One legacy of technology is the vast appetite for waste it creates.  The mantra of “more-better-faster, more-better-faster, more-better-…..” repeated over and over again, invokes a techno-Shiva, creating a deluge of destructive demand.  It leaves in its wake a flood-plain filled with the debris born of a Katrina force consumer-cane.  We think nothing of having 2 -3 -4 cars (one for each person), with literrally hundreds of grocery stores, thousands of fast-food restraunts, 100’s of cable channels, a hundred kinds of flakes for breakfast…which brings me to what this type of thinking does to the work place of today.

Before you click “print”, or create a handout and 50 copies to pass to the class, or hold a meeting and create 10 copies of the handout, before you get rid of that old monitor or that old computer, do you stop to think of what needs to be done with it when you are finished?  Have you ever wondered if it was really necessary? Did you think you were being more productive by producing more reports?

I know, you say it can be re-cycled, etc. 
In one posting, I mentioned that the problem with foreign oil is not that it is foreign.  The problem is hidden in the assumption that we need oil.  The same assumptions apply here within an entirely different paradigm.

Do you need to take a perfectly fine electronic representation of a document and turn it into some carbon melted onto a mixture of wood pulp, rag, and binder (printer toner on paper)?  Why is it that we continue to mow down forests so that we can read something?

With computers, it was thought that one day we would have a paper-less office.  Instead, the opposite has occurred.  We have enough printers, copiers, and plotters to create an avalanche of paper output.  Each output device requires maintenance, electricity, consumable, and reams of paper are fed through them all every year.  Instead of questioning the need for this vast waste, we just purchase more printers so that is easier to create additional waste. (sort of like adding lanes to a freeway; they added lanes to 494 in the cities and the volume of traffic saturated the additional lanes, rendering them obsolete before the project was completed.)

The basic assumption we are making is that output needs to be on paper.  I would like to posit that this is foolish, wasteful, and destructive.

We have a document imaging system at LSC that at least decreases some of the storage requirements for all of those documents that are used to create a paper trail for a students academic records.  As a result, precious square footage (just ask someone how much it costs per square foot to build our new building some time) is not taken up with the storage of tons of paper that someone “might” never look at again, but we are legally required to have on hand for the equivalent of eternity.
What hasn’t been created is a method of removing the source  documents from the paper “food” chain. What also hasn’t happened is a more universal adoption of at least this piece of the paperless puzzle.

What if you could have a student sit down with a stylus based input system (handwriting recognition), fill out a form, print the form (not to a printer) to an image which would then be converted to a digital record of the student’s application?
What if we were to invest more money on large flat-screen monitors, stylus based computing that would permit us to mark up these same documents in digital format and then store the marked up document as a permanent digital record, that could be recalled via query at a later point in time.  What if we were to create a digital format for every document that is ever created, and made it our policy that no documents or forms could ever be created for use with paper until it had been proven conclusively that there was no way to produce, store, retrieve, alter, and view the content digitally. 

I believe that at least one of the primary reasons we print so much stuff is because it is hard to read on a computer screen, and it is even harder to manipulate.  We are forced to the bed of Procrustes when it comes to viewing documents or manipulating data; we don’t naturally sit at a keyboard, or press key combinations to select text, or use a mouse to select text.  Even in the most ergonomically designed office, we do not easily sit and read an electronic book.  The screens make us squint, you can’t “cuddle” up with a computer and read it in bed. (this is not a “naughty” bit, but you are welcome to laugh at my mixed metaphors.)
I would suggest that one of the things that needs to happen before we can discontinue our love affair with printers is the “humanization” of computing.  I don’t know if you have seen the “borg” from television’s star trek, but at times I think that computer manufacturers have been getting most of their engineering done by Borgs-’R-US.  Why is it that they can’t make a laptop out of spongy, soft material that you could actually put on your lap comfortably?  Why is it that we have to use uncomfortable and strange input devices (for instance, what if you could have the equivalent of your current computer screen sit inside of a head’s up display in a light-weight pair of glasses?  The glasses would capture the movement of your eyes by scanning for the movement of your iris.  This would in turn permit the user to simply move her eyes with-in this “virtual” field of vision and the document would scroll or sit still based on what your eyes were “looking” at. Within this “virtual screen” you could focus for a moment on a sentence and the software would highlight it when you tapped your fingers on the desk.  You could even wear a ring that would un-obtrusively signal what you wished to copy and paste. This is a very long parenthetical statement…)  like a mouse and keyboard.

Obviously such hardware, if it does exist (some of it does!), is not available for us to use.  But I would suggest that instead of people purchasing a new computer,  another printer, or some more bloated software, we should seriously consider making their work environment more productive by getting them a larger screen (or two), a comfortable chair, a wireless keyboard and some privacy to work in. 
Your mind works better when your body is relaxed and you are un-distracted.  If you could be comfortable and see the screen(s) better, you may be less inclined to print whatever it is you are trying to read and taking it over to a comfortable chair to have a look at it.

What if we made the culture of the college one where we no longer used paper brochures, paper fliers, paper minutes, paper handouts…

What if you never had to fill out a paper time sheet, a paper expense form, a paper whatever it was.  What if it were a digital entity that was created in electronic format with places that someone could digitally “sign” and then save?  The culture of beauracracy thrives on paper forms that you must, must , must fill out so very, very, very carefully because if you don’t, don’t, don’t, you will be slapped on the knuckles with the brass edge of the ruler, ruler, ruler (it is not always quite so awful, but this is what it feels like to me.)  Instead of chiseling out our works on obelisks made of papyrus, it would be much more fruitful and productive; to be able to write, as it were, on a heart of “digital” flesh that is much more amenable to alteration, that is much more forgiving of our scrawls and scratches, and is more easily transported to the tombs of the digital afterlife, where it can be recalled after a millenium, preserved in death as it was in life.

In that awakening, some future oracles will laugh in wonder at our pre-occupation with paper. 

I think Einstein said:

  I imagine that after 20 years, it (the use of the telegraph) became common knowledge.  Eventually, folks came to expect that it would be there, just like the trains running on time. After many, many years of service, something else came along and now something that once was considered to be a “standard” for communication has fallen out of common usage.  Eventually, the telegraph will complete disappear from the common lexicon of langauage.

Some people are predicting the demise of email, for a variety of reasons.  One reason email may dissappear is SPAM.  By some estimates, more than 75% of all email messages sent are SPAM, and this figure is only going to get worse.  Email also has some shortcomings as a medium.  My boss is always telling me to keep my messages to no longer than what will fit in the box on the screen displaying my message.

So my messages sometimes are sent in packets, like the Burma-Shave signs. Or I use a lot of short hand. Or it takes me a really, really long time to compose something.  If you have read this far, bless you, but you don’t need me to tell you that I am not a writer. 

So another problem with email is that it is so easy to send that proof-reading does not always occur.  At best, we trust the spell-checker to find words that have been shot through by the drive-by typist.  At worst, we send something to 5000 people that has incomprehensible grammar, bizarre twists of phrase, and spell-checker assisted suicide.  Then, if that was not embarrasing enough, we find that the misshapen message has been forwarded to email accounts ad infinitum providing a global audience to our incompetence.

The advances of technology have made it possible for one person to commit as many errors in a moment as it took an individual to create in a lifetime without technological assistance.

The other “Problem” with email, in fact, the main problem with email is that there is WAY TOO MUCH EMAIL!   I used to love getting letters from the post office, especially all of the letters that I got from my grandfather.  These letters were usually written quickly, but contained insights into life, love, success, failure that changed my thinking in radical ways.  When I first started using email (sometime in the late 1980’s), I actually knew the people that I was communicating with, and we had something important to say.  Somewhere along the line, the marketing idiots got hold of the idea and the next thing you know we have to wade through mountains of messages to find anything that is really important.  I doubt I have read an email in the last ten years that really had anything even approaching the level of the short personal messages that my grandfather wrote.  I wonder if email is destroying the future shakespeares?

We have a policy that the “official” means of communication at this institution is email.  I cringe when I think of it.  On the surface, it sounds like a good idea.  Quick, efficient, reliable.  So lacking in the human touch.  I am not a ‘touchy-feely’ type of person, but sometimes I wonder if the “official” means of communication at an institute of higher learning should be something higher, like telepathy, or sign language, or chorals, cantatas, symphonies, loving embraces, comic monologues, rock music, sculpture, dance…iambic pentameter, the tears of a mourning family…the weeping of a forlorn child…anything but the 1984-ish pronouncements that are streamed impersonally to each and every student.

 Our policy reminder…come to our event…you WILL read your email or suffer the consequences and doom that follow…..

One other really big problem with email is that it does not lend itself to very great depths of thought.  It is a telegraphic method of communication..short bursts of staccato taps that demand insistently that we read quickly and reply–quickly!!!  Everything is urgent with email.  We greet each other in the hall with “Did you read my email yet????)  If the response is negative, we are upbraded by the sender, “Why not????” It even comes to the point of having to defend attention to other details of your work life.  We make it a subject of research (?!)  Did the students open the messages?  Did they respond to our survey?  Is it possible that we have something more urgent than your survey?  Email has become a constant droning, whining, squealing sound in the background noise of our lives. If we neglect it for but a short week, it becomes the untended part of the garden, over-run, demanding attention until we have pulled out all the weeds.  It becomes the new parable of wheat and tares; sometimes we refuse to follow the advice of the landlord, and we delete all of the messages, just to get rid of them somehow.

Another problem with email is that something better has not really come along…yet.  This, in a way, is a lot like the problem with dependency upon foreign oil.  The chief component of the problem is hidden…it is not that the oil is foreign….the problem is oil, period.  We will continue to justify global warming, smog, paving over of a nation, destruction of wildlife and habitat, as long as we think there is no other way.  Electric cars actually outsold combustion engine vehicles in this country at one time. At one time, it was not uncommon for farmers to have wind generators. At one time, people actually wrote letters to each other. 

What is the replacment for email?  What other form will communication take?  I think the first thing is to realize that it is not that email needs to be reformed somehow.  It is time to realize that it really is not a replacement for true communication.  The problem is to get back to the tools that my grandfather and his father before him used. 

Trade in your keyboard for a pencil and paper.  Think, think, think……write, write, write.  write some more.  If you have it within you, sing, dance, love, compose.  Smile, tell jokes, be silly, be serious.  Rebel against the official methods by supplanting them with the genuine methods. 

Oh, and be sure to email your friends a link to this blog!

I followed the launch of vista and office 2007 through the beta, release candidate, pre-release, post release, etc.  I went to the launch (wasn’t a launch actually).  I downloaded and installed vista and I am using it as my main office desktop.

 Why?  Not because I love or even am fond of Micro$oft.  I actually hate the company and just about everything they stand for.  I do it because I am sure to have to support this wreck of an os, so I had better get cracking.

What do I think of it?  Well, for starters, it is not exactly what you would call a racehorse.  Those of you that know anything about horses will probably know what I mean by “glue-grade”.  Copying files from a network drive used to be quick, but now it is completely confused.  Remote Desktop client has some weird ideas about authentication (enhanced security?  I don’t think so.)  Device drivers for the sound card on my hand-me-down pc were available in beta form.  Had to download the beta then there was a time ‘bomb’ on the driver (creative labs, what were you thinking???).  Thirty days later, skype can’t open because the sound card driver is no longer permitted to run.  I go to the site and download it again.  This time it says that I don’t have a sound card.  what a step up.

Out of the box with no third party software I can’t burn an ISO file to a disk using the built in dvd burning software.  I can only do it from a command prompt.  I should have stayed in the DOS world!

I can’t run my vmware virtualization software on this operating system.  Only Microsoft’s Virtual PC works (they are busy trying to put vmware out of business, just like they killed Novell, Netscape, Apple, WordPerfect, Borland, etc.)  It looks to me like one of the primary reasons they create anything “new” (I use the word loosely), is to kill any competing product. 

 Here are the plusses: you get a cool looking interface stolen from Macintosh, the Operating system (finally) protects itself better from sentient torpid universally pedantic IT destructive users.

They get an email from their buddy with a link to go to dancinghamsters.com “I want to see the cute dancing hamster on my desktop…”  They get a warning telling them that “www.dancinghamsters.com is attempting to install “cutespyware.exe” on their computer.  Do wish to continue? Yes…No….Cancel….Of course, I want to see the dancing hamsters! So I will install “cutespware.exe”.   Plus, I forward the message on to all of my best buddies so that they, too, can have a dancing hamster.

Not too much later, you get a phone call (”my browser works really slow”.  “I can’t get the web page to load that I need for my job.” “I was just working along and then everything just froze up….”) 

From the standpoint of the operating system, you have to re-learn how to do all the stuff you knew how to do in the last operating system again.  how to find files (at least they took the “cute” puppy that was going to help you out.  How many of us really enjoyed “Clippy”, the paper-clip assistant?)

Instead of the above scenario, with vista you can’t install the software unless you are an administrator.  Everytime something like this happens, the screen goes dark, then there is a flash and a warning the user that something is up.  click OK to continue…..

This is more or less stolen directly from unix/linux, but with more bells and whistles.  So while you are initially setting up the OS and installing software, it looks as though there is a bit of a thunderstorm happening on your PC as it flashes the warnings.

 So now we are getting calls from people to try out office 2007 and windows vista.  The way we are going to do it is by creating a virtual pc’s with vista, office 2007, all the browser plugins for IE7 (another enhanced menu-less product.  Go and relearn what you already knew.  A giant leap forward!  (where is chairman mao when we need him?), antivirus, etc.  The great thing about virtualization is that before, you only had one Operating system running at a time.  Now you can support two or more operating systems on one computer.  Double the support calls, double the work, double the fun!!!

Microsoft has decided that the menu system that has worked so well for the last 20 years with CUA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access

is no good.  Now we are going to have to use the “ribbon” to access various features.  The funny thing about this is that at the product “pre-launch”, they mentioned that the ‘ribbon’ would not be used in Outlook 2007, since that product received some good reviews regarding its useability.  So they decided to take a good thing and make it better by eliminating it. Am I the only one that is saying “DUH?”

We have a number of locally developed apps here, one called ***** (I don’t dare name it for fear of reprisal) that is kind of an abomination with strange menus, weird convoluted data screens, totally strange and unique keyboard “shortcuts”.  When I gave it a whirl on VISTA, it croaked rather quietly.

Turns out vista can fool it into thinking that it is running on windows 2000, but only if you run it entirely from a local drive.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that windows still uses drive letters, unlike other systems that let you have more than 26 places to store your files.  I heard they were trying really hard at MS to re-do the file system but ran out of time.  Maybe they need some help with stealing that system from another operating system?  Netware did not need drive letters, linux/unix does not need drive letters, mac’s do not need drive letters… Anyway, it is a comfort to see that Microsoft remembered to keep that ‘feature’

Oh, did I also mention that microsoft still uses file extensions to identify the type of file? So if you don’t add an extension to the file name the operating system can’t simply look at the contents and launch the appropriate application.

But (thanks at least in part to Microsoft’s Marketing department) we do have ribbons.