Daniel Webster

11. Chapter - Embracing the Future: Computers

            I wanted to be a writing writer. In pursuit of this vanity, I made handwritten corrections on handwritten pages. When my scribbles were nearly illegible, I asked my secretary for a typewritten draft. Never satisfactory, the draft was soon covered with handwritten corrections until nearly illegible. I returned it for new one. After several tries it occurred to me the process imposed on a loyal, uncomplaining woman. I needed a word processor. I did not want a computer that only processed words. I hoped our son Jon, then eight, might become a hacker. Shopping local stores, I learned they wanted one thousand dollars more than a mail order house in Massachusetts for identical hardware. The salesman explained the difference represented service. The store's staff installed the machine and was available to teach me tricks of this new trade. He told me that people who purchase computers from far away places encounter blown chips, smoking mother boards and disk drives that refuse to boot. The prophecies seemed especially dire since I did not know what he was talking about. In the end I could not bring myself to pay so large a premium for service and went mail order.
            At the time, circa 1980, I was beaten regularly at racquetball by a man whose son owned an Apple computer. Jim, my friend's son, recommended it, and I took his advice. About a week after phoning the order I unpacked the computer, monitor, disk drives and printer. Intimidated by twenty-six pin ribbon cables protruding from various components, I called Jim for help. After he plugged everything together, the printer refused to print. Visions of dire prophecies coming true tormented me. Jim poked around and decided a jumper box on the printer interface (the card connecting the computer to the printer) was not configured. I called the mail order house where a sympathetic voice expressed regret and promised action. The next day I received a configured jumper box which I plugged into the interface. I felt totally unmerited satisfaction, when everything worked.
            The printer blew a transistor during its warranty period and the local Computerland repaired it without charge. Their courtesy was unexpected since I had rejected their wares for the economy of mail order. Other than that errant transistor, my Apple and I lived together happily until I replaced it with a more powerful machine. I enrolled in a programming course at a local community college. Perhaps my expectations were unreasonable, but I learned more one on one with the machine. Computers are patient. You type a program and run it. Errors, identified by program line number, are displayed on the screen. You correct the mistake and continue. Should things go too wrong, you turn the computer off, clear its memory, and begin again. Short of taking a hammer to the keyboard, you cannot hurt it. You save what you want; delete what you do not want. There never was a more agreeable machine.
            As always, ignorance is a disadvantage. I ordered a word processing program and after digesting a two hundred page manual, found the input and output files sometimes crossed, turning everything to gibberish. Assuming it was my fault, I spent hours searching for my error. It annoyed me to read a review of the program in which the reviewer had the same problem. I replaced the fancy word processing program with a less ambitious one (no word count or automatic index), but it printed what I put in. Later I graduated to an I.B.M. XT clone, Word Perfect 5.0, and a 30 megabyte hard drive, writer's heaven.
            I advised friends to buy computers, but the prospect of a new, interesting experience did not justify the expense. Now when far more powerful machines cost a fraction of what I paid for that 48 kilobyte Apple, they lack the interest to try. If you are concerned with return on investment, you need a fairly large business before a computer becomes a reasonable expenditure. Computers file recipes which they print at the touch of a button, but most cooks find index cards easier. Computers print checks and reconcile checkbooks, but when you write few checks, it makes more sense to do it yourself. Computers are not always practical, but as the most absorbing, interactive puzzle devised by man, they are, though sometimes exasperating, fun.
            I read computer magazines, typing program listings that lost me early on, but I learned. I know something about hexadecimals (a base sixteen counting system), and high and low resolution graphics, but I cannot write a programs to draw a picture on the screen. I tried erasing copy protection schemes, electronic locks software publishers use to keep customers from duplicating their programs, a hobby of questionable legality. I never succeeded, but my efforts taught me about these marvelous machines. The machine always has time for me when I have time for it. I can explore that dinky Apple the rest of my life without uncovering every nook and cranny.
            The computer will surpass television as a society changing invention, but its impact will be delayed for the same reason printing presses took centuries to work their miracles. A degree of literacy is required. Computer literacy will come faster because electronic technology is fast. Computers may eliminate communication problems created by different human languages. Humans cannot communicate in Basic, COBOL, FORTRAN, or Logo, a few of many computer languages, but it is not unthinkable the Esperanto of the electronic age will be a high level, standard computer language installed in every machine.
            Computers change knowledge relationships on a grand scale. A modem (modulator-demodulator) connects my computer to telephone lines and links me to thousands of bulletin boards. Large public data bases like CompuServe or Mead Data's Nexis contain a staggering array of information ready for delivery to my house where my printer will print anything I want. We have not scratched the surface of electronic possibilities, but to promote social change, we need not wait for tomorrow's inventions. The hardware exists for us to change the way we transact public business. No society, no matter how 'free', obtains the consent of the governed. Voting machines are expensive and time consuming, but electronic technology creates new possibilities. With a computer terminal you can vote from home on any social issue.
            Cynics claim electronic voting makes cheating easy. This negative view of human nature leads one to believe everyone wants to beat the system. Money-based, hierarchical, zero-sum economies create cheaters because the object is to get more than your share. In societies based on abundance, honor systems are not preposterous, but idealism is no match for the status quo. Security systems can eliminate objections of the less than trusting. Plastic cards, like those used in bank teller machines, will insure that each voter votes once. To mollify those who fear the cards will fall into unauthorized hands, we add passwords to identify voters the way security codes identify bank customers. Computer assisted referenda will be at least as honest as elections supervised by party affiliated moderators.
            We begin by creating a capacity to communicate with each other. Debates with millions of debaters speaking simultaneously are bedlam, but we move towards mass interactions. Telephone talk shows come close, but no switchboard can handle millions of simultaneous inputs, and talk show hosts answer one call at a time. Computer assisted debate implies a different conversational format. Answers need not follow questions, and time constraints vanish because computers remember inputs which they can recall on request. Everyone comes and goes as they please. The process utilizes the random access nature of electronic technology. Facts are collected in no special sequence and retrieved the same way, opposite of linear print. We read books from beginning to end, and create a reality in which first things come first and second things second. Computers mimic the way we think. When we remember, we do not begin with our first memory and move chronologically to the needed information. Our children, flicking television channels, more closely resemble the computer's random access. Linear, literate adults condemn what they perceive as brief attention spans, and suggest that television destroys powers of concentration. Today's children are not stupid, it is just that linear educators cannot compete with intense bursts of cathode ray information. Mesmerized by the engrossing, rapidly changing tube, our children reject print-oriented school work as too slow. Random access education requires libraries of video cassettes and students teaching each other without curricula or schedule.
            Computers change us. Today's competition-oriented economies create several word processing programs, each with features others lack, but each copyrighted, and unavailable to contribute to the grandest, most powerful word processing program of all. Hardware differences make it difficult, if not impossible, for one computer to interact with another. Printers have almost as many protocols as there are printer models. Manufacturers cling to market shares because it makes sense to make their machines unique. In pre-electronic times, economic competition, though cumbersome, was not crippling. It did not matter that Ford used different distributors than General Motors because General Motors coupes operate independently of Ford sedans. Computers must network if the system's information is to be available to every user.
            It will be difficult to persuade computer manufacturers to build compatible machines and Congress, unready for electronic democracy, will not mandate the mixed blessing of standards. I.B.M., with the enormous success of its personal computer, created an unofficial standard, but cheaper clones drove its machines from the market place. For a time I.B.M. marketed machines that could not be duplicated legally, but it seems to be returning to the open architecture that made its personal computer popular. Standards mattered before electronic technology, but electronic technology makes standardization essential.
            Differences between Beta and VHS formats meant neighbors could not exchange video cassettes, and video stores, until the triumph of VHS, stocked both formats at no advantage to anyone. Incompatibility without gaining performance is outrageous, but we are wary because standards lock us into arrangements we later regret. We keep QWERTY typewriter keyboards after other configurations prove more efficient because today's typists, reluctant to learn a new keyboard, condemn younger generations to older inefficiencies. Electronic technology creates a different reality. Computers change keyboards at the flick of a switch. I can keep QWERTY, while my children, learning a different keyboard, use the same machine.
            Computers will supplant political parties as prospective candidates come on line to announce candidacies. The only prerequisite for office holders will be computer terminals through which the rest of us are notified of the latest hat in the ring. Future presidents will administer, not lead, and elections will no longer be written in stone because electronic democracy can deletes office holders as easily as word processors delete typographical errors.
            Meaningful dialogues among millions or billions of people seems impossible, but we begin by televising a focal group, a legislature, or a committee. Viewers transmit comments or questions to the panel's computer. If two hundred people ask the same question, the computer asks it once. Data bases created by the process are available for leisurely review. After the subject has been explored to everyone's satisfaction, we vote, and the result, tabulated by computer, is immediately available. Think of electronic discussions as libraries with each data base a book. Print libraries mean taking turns reading the available copies. Computers allow millions or billions to read the same book at the same time.
            When everyone is entitled to the same high standard of living, most of today's social problems will disappear. Societies based on abundance do not need ballistic missiles or binary poison gases. For things like abortions, nuclear energy, pollution, or drugs, everyone decides. We resist a different perception of our situation, but other ages acted on faith with happy results. Electronic democracy is reasonable if only because we have no alternative. Like our founding fathers who advanced from monarchy to representative democracy, it is our turn to proceed from old to new.
            I have no fear of humanity, believing as I do that aggression will depart when inequality disappears. Optimism is not entirely justified in our circumstances, but the transition from representative to electronic democracy can be accomplished at small cost. The incidental benefits are enough to persuade the skeptical. Fiber optic cables needed for electronic democracy carry other information. The computers, when not involved in public business, are available for games or bulletin boards. If two minds are better than one, two hundred million minds are better than two. Connected and communicating, we can reach the stars.