G21 - MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE: "Is Microsoft Bothering You, Too?"

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Is Microsoft Bothering You, Too?

by Ron Diener

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Many years ago, because I was a librarian and libraries were converting much of their processing to computerized forms, I was perforce engaged in "computerization" or "automation." And I worked hard at it.
At first, it was mainframes, big mainframes without names. The really big mainframes had numbers, not names. It was not the IBM Numberbeater, Small-Size. No, it was the IBM 370-145. It had a resident engineer to keep it running because it was forever breaking - I mean, "faulting."
The early frontpanels had arrays of switches and lights for operating the machine. Imagine our surprise the first day they brought in a monitor (a CRT ---cathode ray tube --- with attached keyboard) - no, they brought in two of them, because they were so unreliable one was forever being fixed, waiting for parts, etc. The peons (and professors) used punched cards, thousands and millions of eighty-column Holerith cards with the notched corner.
We learned COBOL, FORTRAN, enough Assembler to fix weak spots in the other two compilers. Specialists added a few more narrowly applicable languages, such as ALGOL (I never met an ALGOL user, but the Computer Center was forever putting out announcements like: "Patch 91 for ALGOL rev 2.12a in its mapped version has been installed again. Please pardon the delay in getting a clean compile last week, because we mistakenly installed Patch 91 for its unmapped version.") Adventuresome folks were learning PL/1 - there you had the "F" compiler, the "L" compiler and the wondrous "X" (or Optimizing) compiler.
We were told to solve problems. We did. We solved accounting problems, processing problems, identification and location problems, library circulation problems, all kinds of problems. Some of the accounting software written at that time, in COBOL, runs today in its Nth version or iteration. No one has looked at the source code for years - if it still exists.

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c/: rmdir

CPM

COMPETITIVENESS
The minicomputers followed right behind the mainframes in serviceability and functionality - at far, far lower initial and continuing costs. Real-time, on-line editors improved dramatically. The punched cards were out, the minicomputer terminal was in. Multi-user, multi-programming and multi-tasking systems gave the users enough pieces of the machine to accomplish their tasks, as the speeds and sizes of the main boxes got faster and smaller. Imagine the delight when a 92mb disk system could fit into a cabinet the size of a washing machine!
Right behind the minicomputers came the microcomputers, the complete computer in a machine the size of a terminal - maybe with one small additional box. A boss concept, what? The debates raged between distributed processing (a large computer with many users) and unit processing (a small individualized computer). Cost comparisons. Cost over the lifetime of the equipment. The ever shortening time between "generations" of computer equipment meant, to some, that you spent the least you could, then continuing to "upgrade." All the terminology was meant to indicate that if you made a change, you were progressing, improving, doing more with less. Salesmen were paid to "move iron," the incentive system clearly on the side of change, change, change.
The microcomputer came out with a usable operating system, one or more programming languages, a few debugging utilities - but no database system, no fancy graphics, no color. Magnetic storage systems were improved again and again, until the 92mb disk system fit into a "slot," not into a box the size of a washing machine.
The lack of a database system was not a serious problem. If necessary, programmers could put together a simple Index-Sequential Access Method (ISAM) database. Or for many applications, occasional sorting of a file was sufficient.
There were simple interpreters to use for programming purposes. At first BASIC, then interpreted COBOL, was available. They were simple, without a large array of options: a comprehensive manual could be done in less than a hundred pages. There were only simple graphics capabilities. But enough to make simple games - more like puzzles that you had to figure out.
The use of a simple operating system with a simple interpeter like BASIC made possible the instruction of children, youngsters, up through teenagers, to analyze and solve problems. There were enough geometric and trigonometric functions in early forms of BASIC so that one could teach small children analytic geometry and trigonometry. They could solve simple problems, plot the results, get interesting solutions. They could build these successes into games or puzzles. The string operators in BASIC were a strong point: one could show a child how to imagine the characters in a long string, then chop it up and put it back together in various ways. They would scream delights when the results were a naughty word that Mom would find highly objectionable.
Ah, yes. The IBM PC and the DOS/BASIC combination. Great stuff.
The Memoirs Logo. While Mr. Gates took the credit and the cash for mass producing this stuff, he did not write it. His shop did not produce it. His shop re-produced a version of a Disk Operating System that he bought. Mr. Gates did not produce BASIC. Professors John Kemeney and Thomas Kurtz did. The earliest DOS of Microsoft was cobbled together from existing parts much the way that the IBM Personal Computer was cobbled together with existing technology. But the PC took. So did DOS and BASIC. They were wonderful "computerization" and programming tools.

The course of history from the [re-]production of DOS to Windows 98 is the step-by-step development of a monstrosity. It is unduly large for its purposes. It is thoughtlessly complificated - not complex, but complificated. It is a simple concept that is forcefully made more and more complex until no one knows how it all works. It is the "progress" from a tool for solving problems to the equivalent of a digital sailboat. (A sailboat, by definition, is a hole in the water that you pour money into.)
This digital sailboat, called Windows, is a hole in the middle of a microcomputer that you need to pour more and more money into, just to get it to do what its simplest antecedents could do with the initial installation price. It is like the largest bell in the world: the Czar had it built and mounted in the Kremlin, rang it once, as the bell cracked - it stands there yet as a monument to oversize and complification.
Out of BASIC came, a la Microsoft, QuickBASIC. We were now have way from a totally unusable language. The manual took five hundred pages. There were options and alternatives a-plenty. A few people came to master it, as the concept receded farther and farther from reach. Then, glory be! Microsoft developed Visual BASIC. We have now departed from all reason and scale. The basic (sic) manual set for VBASIC is three volumes. It is not a real language, to start with. It is a utility for calling up options and alternatives to the Windows systems, to incorporate what one needs at the moment into the Windows-like application. It is the tool that is used to make you think like Windows, no longer concentrating on providing a valuable solution to a problem, but rather fitting a solution into Windows options. The very idea of taking Visual BASIC to a child to teach the child how to solve a problem is ludicrous. Visual BASIC is now complificated to the point where some software vendors are writing programs that PRODUCE Visual BASIC from sets of - you guessed it - multiple-choice questions.
The wonders of Windows as a teaching tool. Ah, geometry! But the computer makes the shapes and the children fill out multiple-choice guesses at answers to trick questions. Ah, problem solving! To be sure, but Windows "educational" software does not teach children to think, but rather, to guess at answers. Ah, the "educational" software packages, that teach children that classrooms are for competing, one against another, as they all try to be "the best." The so-called Garrison Keilor educational experience that brings all the children to perform above average: it was impossible that they all be above average before computers, just as it is impossible for them all to be above average after computers.
In the end, we bring up a generation of some of the best test takers in the world, who cannot think for themselves. They can take multiple choice tests in subjects they have neither studied nor have any interest - and succeed in the tests. And when they are done with school, they come home to more of the same. That is, more of the same when the parents pick out the "educational software" at the mall.
When the children themselves go to the mall, with their own money, they prefer games: games that are no longer puzzles, but games that exact unspeakable punishments and cruelties on "virtual" creatures; games that do not require time and brain power to "figure out," but rather re-inforce cruelty and inhumanity with screams of pain and torture, with body parts a-flying, with blood and body fluids a-splattering, with faces contorted and distorted beyond recognition.
Once upon a time, we taught our children how to do a bubble sort on a file of names in random order: lo and behold! They are re-arranged in alphabetic order. Now they play "games" where the blood and fluids bubble from twisted mouths and deadly wounds.
Once upon a time, a professor of physics, a college president, sat down to write a language interpreter that would revolutionize the computer and make it into Everyman's tool. Professor John Kemeney copyrighted the results, not to enrich himself and found a "software empire," but precisely to prevent someone from doing so. One cannot help but wonder if such a notion every crossed the mind of the One Hundred Billion Dollar Man, Mr. Gates, that he copyright an operating system and give it to the world to prevent someone from profiting unduly from something that everyone wants as a tool.

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RON DIENER is a history buff and Library Scientist who resides in Raleigh, North Carolina. His previous contributions to the G21 have included an essay on Democracy for the U.S. Senate and the trial of Native American leader John Racehorse, Sr.

MEMOIR ONE: The Pinnacle, by FELICITY USSHER
MEMOIR TWO: Age of Exploitation, by ROD AMIS
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Many years ago, because I was a librarian and libraries were converting much of their processing to computerized forms, I was perforce engaged in "computerization" or "automation." And I worked hard at it. At first, it was mainframes, big mainframes without names. The really big mainframes had numbers, not names. It was not the IBM Numberbeater, Small-Size. No, it was the IBM 370-145. It had a resident engineer to keep it running because it was forever breaking - I mean, "faulting." The early frontpanels had arrays of switches and lights for operating the machine. Imagine our surprise the first day they brought in a monitor (a CRT ---cathode ray tube --- with attached keyboard) - no, they brought in two of them, because they were so unreliable one was forever being fixed, waiting for parts, etc. The peons (and professors) used punched cards, thousands and millions of eighty-column Holerith cards with the notched corner. We learned COBOL, FORTRAN, enough Assembler to fix weak spots in the other two compilers. Specialists added a few more narrowly applicable languages, such as ALGOL (I never met an ALGOL user, but the Computer Center was forever putting out announcements like: "Patch 91 for ALGOL rev 2.12a in its mapped version has been installed again. Please pardon the delay in getting a clean compile last week, because we mistakenly installed Patch 91 for its unmapped version.") Adventuresome folks were learning PL/1 - there you had the "F" compiler, the "L" compiler and the wondrous "X" (or Optimizing) compiler. We were told to solve problems. We did. We solved accounting problems, processing problems, identification and location problems, library circulation problems, all kinds of problems. Some of the accounting software written at that time, in COBOL, runs today in its Nth version or iteration. No one has looked at the source code for years - if it still exists.
INTERACTIVITY c/: rmdir CPM COMPETITIVENESS	The minicomputers followed right behind the mainframes in serviceability and functionality - at far, far lower initial and continuing costs. Real-time, on-line editors improved dramatically. The punched cards were out, the minicomputer terminal was in. Multi-user, multi-programming and multi-tasking systems gave the users enough pieces of the machine to accomplish their tasks, as the speeds and sizes of the main boxes got faster and smaller. Imagine the delight when a 92mb disk system could fit into a cabinet the size of a washing machine! Right behind the minicomputers came the microcomputers, the complete computer in a machine the size of a terminal - maybe with one small additional box. A boss concept, what? The debates raged between distributed processing (a large computer with many users) and unit processing (a small individualized computer). Cost comparisons. Cost over the lifetime of the equipment. The ever shortening time between "generations" of computer equipment meant, to some, that you spent the least you could, then continuing to "upgrade." All the terminology was meant to indicate that if you made a change, you were progressing, improving, doing more with less. Salesmen were paid to "move iron," the incentive system clearly on the side of change, change, change. The microcomputer came out with a usable operating system, one or more programming languages, a few debugging utilities - but no database system, no fancy graphics, no color. Magnetic storage systems were improved again and again, until the 92mb disk system fit into a "slot," not into a box the size of a washing machine. The lack of a database system was not a serious problem. If necessary, programmers could put together a simple Index-Sequential Access Method (ISAM) database. Or for many applications, occasional sorting of a file was sufficient. There were simple interpreters to use for programming purposes. At first BASIC, then interpreted COBOL, was available. They were simple, without a large array of options: a comprehensive manual could be done in less than a hundred pages. There were only simple graphics capabilities. But enough to make simple games - more like puzzles that you had to figure out. The use of a simple operating system with a simple interpeter like BASIC made possible the instruction of children, youngsters, up through teenagers, to analyze and solve problems. There were enough geometric and trigonometric functions in early forms of BASIC so that one could teach small children analytic geometry and trigonometry. They could solve simple problems, plot the results, get interesting solutions. They could build these successes into games or puzzles. The string operators in BASIC were a strong point: one could show a child how to imagine the characters in a long string, then chop it up and put it back together in various ways. They would scream delights when the results were a naughty word that Mom would find highly objectionable. Ah, yes. The IBM PC and the DOS/BASIC combination. Great stuff. While Mr. Gates took the credit and the cash for mass producing this stuff, he did not write it. His shop did not produce it. His shop re-produced a version of a Disk Operating System that he bought. Mr. Gates did not produce BASIC. Professors John Kemeney and Thomas Kurtz did. The earliest DOS of Microsoft was cobbled together from existing parts much the way that the IBM Personal Computer was cobbled together with existing technology. But the PC took. So did DOS and BASIC. They were wonderful "computerization" and programming tools.
The course of history from the [re-]production of DOS to Windows 98 is the step-by-step development of a monstrosity. It is unduly large for its purposes. It is thoughtlessly complificated - not complex, but complificated. It is a simple concept that is forcefully made more and more complex until no one knows how it all works. It is the "progress" from a tool for solving problems to the equivalent of a digital sailboat. (A sailboat, by definition, is a hole in the water that you pour money into.) This digital sailboat, called Windows, is a hole in the middle of a microcomputer that you need to pour more and more money into, just to get it to do what its simplest antecedents could do with the initial installation price. It is like the largest bell in the world: the Czar had it built and mounted in the Kremlin, rang it once, as the bell cracked - it stands there yet as a monument to oversize and complification. Out of BASIC came, a la Microsoft, QuickBASIC. We were now have way from a totally unusable language. The manual took five hundred pages. There were options and alternatives a-plenty. A few people came to master it, as the concept receded farther and farther from reach. Then, glory be! Microsoft developed Visual BASIC. We have now departed from all reason and scale. The basic (sic) manual set for VBASIC is three volumes. It is not a real language, to start with. It is a utility for calling up options and alternatives to the Windows systems, to incorporate what one needs at the moment into the Windows-like application. It is the tool that is used to make you think like Windows, no longer concentrating on providing a valuable solution to a problem, but rather fitting a solution into Windows options. The very idea of taking Visual BASIC to a child to teach the child how to solve a problem is ludicrous. Visual BASIC is now complificated to the point where some software vendors are writing programs that PRODUCE Visual BASIC from sets of - you guessed it - multiple-choice questions. The wonders of Windows as a teaching tool. Ah, geometry! But the computer makes the shapes and the children fill out multiple-choice guesses at answers to trick questions. Ah, problem solving! To be sure, but Windows "educational" software does not teach children to think, but rather, to guess at answers. Ah, the "educational" software packages, that teach children that classrooms are for competing, one against another, as they all try to be "the best." The so-called Garrison Keilor educational experience that brings all the children to perform above average: it was impossible that they all be above average before computers, just as it is impossible for them all to be above average after computers. In the end, we bring up a generation of some of the best test takers in the world, who cannot think for themselves. They can take multiple choice tests in subjects they have neither studied nor have any interest - and succeed in the tests. And when they are done with school, they come home to more of the same. That is, more of the same when the parents pick out the "educational software" at the mall. When the children themselves go to the mall, with their own money, they prefer games: games that are no longer puzzles, but games that exact unspeakable punishments and cruelties on "virtual" creatures; games that do not require time and brain power to "figure out," but rather re-inforce cruelty and inhumanity with screams of pain and torture, with body parts a-flying, with blood and body fluids a-splattering, with faces contorted and distorted beyond recognition. Once upon a time, we taught our children how to do a bubble sort on a file of names in random order: lo and behold! They are re-arranged in alphabetic order. Now they play "games" where the blood and fluids bubble from twisted mouths and deadly wounds. Once upon a time, a professor of physics, a college president, sat down to write a language interpreter that would revolutionize the computer and make it into Everyman's tool. Professor John Kemeney copyrighted the results, not to enrich himself and found a "software empire," but precisely to prevent someone from doing so. One cannot help but wonder if such a notion every crossed the mind of the One Hundred Billion Dollar Man, Mr. Gates, that he copyright an operating system and give it to the world to prevent someone from profiting unduly from something that everyone wants as a tool.	GLOBAL COMMUNITY The World's Magazine: g21.net Event #180: For Future Historians JOIN THE G21 MAILING LIST. Get updates on new features. Take part in our Readership polls, shape the future of The World's Magazine. It's easy! E-mail The World's Magazine with the "Subject" line: SUBSCRIBE. LAST WEEK's EDITION For Deep Background visit the G21-Barnes & Noble Shop OR get great books at the G21 BARNES & NOBLE SEARCH ENGINE The Main Event HOME THEY HAVE STOLEN YOUR MEMORIES. THERE IS NO HISTORY. THIS IS WHERE I WOULD LIKE TO BE TODAY.