Future Options

The effect of Gresham’s Law on software (last week’s post) need not be our future. Software companies might change their ways and make machines smarter. Won’t happen. Letting software devolve is more profitable (in the short-term).

This choice between smarter or dumber machines is but one option for our future. Science Fiction shows machines taking over. In reality, people are in fact working on this. They think increased power (Moore’s Law) means superior intelligent machines are inevitable. (Wrong; power does not equal smarts.)

They don’t say anything about us becoming an inferior species and serving the machines. They don’t realize using superior machines must make us subservient. They can’t see these machines will be controlled by a few with the real power: money. How naïve!

Fortunately, not many believe in the likelihood of this inhuman future. Unfortunately, those who do are directing massive efforts and resources that could be put to better use. For far less, we could have practical computers actually benefiting everyone.

Jaron Lanier’s recent book, Who Owns The Future, describes a different path to our virtual enslavement. He says the networks controlling information, acquired at little or no cost, become richer as more of us pay for more access. This concentration of information will reduce jobs, destroying the middle class.

This dystopian future is already happening. Lanier offers a formula for an alternate economy, but will it deter the current juggernaut? Note these massive networks also have smarter computers. Another path to dumber computers for the rest of us.

My plea for better software is simpler than Lanier’s remedy, but neither is strong enough to resist the enormous forces already at work. Yet, you and I own hardware powerful enough to fight this—if we had software to match.

Instead, we’re being sold down the river. Literally. Search engine software doesn’t find for us; it sells to us. Dumb software doesn’t serve us; we must adapt to it. And bad software keeps updating; getting dumber every day.

A Tale of Two Laws

Last week’s post claimed computers are getting dumber. Few people subscribe to this point of view. Not surprisingly, many people believe computers are getting smarter. Actually, what they say is computers are getting more powerful.

They confuse increased power with increased intelligence. I agree hardware is getting more powerful, but software—and therefore the whole computer we deal with—is getting dumber. There are reasons, laws in fact, that explain both views.

The primary law concerning change on this planet is natural selection. However, there are two laws having nothing to do with evolution that explain computer change. One is a mere half-century old; the other dates back about two and a half millennia.

First, is Moore’s Law: the number of transistors on a chip (integrated circuit) doubles every two years. Predicted by Gordon E. Moore in 1965, it refers to hardware. But hardware is not the whole computer. The other side of the computer coin is—all together, class—software.

The other law, Gresham’s Law, governs software changes. Simplified as “bad money drives out good,” it did not originate with Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579). It can be traced to The Frogs by Aristophanes. Originally about counterfeiting, it’s often stated as, other things being equal, bad drives out good.

Bad software drives out good not because they are equal but because they appear equal. Success has little to do with value in our world of uninformed consumers. Value is easily overwhelmed by price, advertising, and the illusion of “almost as good.”

These two laws affect hardware and software, respectively. Moore’s Law applies to chips such as CPUs. This is why people mistake improved power for improved smarts. They forget Moore’s Law has nothing to do with software. Gresham’s Law does.

What we users see, what we have to cope with, are computer interfaces—mostly software. Here, Gresham’s Law is King, and the interfaces are the incompetent Fools. The end result, from where we users sit, is dumber and dumber computers.

The Blank Plague

To begin by defining a problem is good science. The current problem is disappearing rollovers—which is bad design. Rollover is a web term describing what happens when a cursor moves over a text (or object) link on a page. The simplest example is when you move the cursor over a text link and it changes color. Often, the shape of the cursor also changes to a pointing finger.

Rollovers on web pages are there to indicate, clearly, to the user not only the location of the cursor but what’s likely to happen if the user clicks the mouse. Being programmable, rollovers can have many colors, forms, and even animations. This flexibility can also be abused, hence the problem.

Within the past week, I’ve encountered a number of web pages where placing the cursor on text or objects caused them to become invisible. The rollover made them disappear! Every day I find at least one or two sites implementing this particular stupidity. If you don’t know why it’s stupid—and apparently some programmers don’t—I will explain.

The primary purpose of the rollover, as I said above, is to indicate clearly the location of your cursor and therefore where you will go if the mouse is clicked. Making the text or object beneath the cursor disappear tells you neither. If you can’t see what the cursor is pointing to, how can you know where you are or what a click will do?

I don’t know where or how (or by whom) this really bad idea got started, but I do know it’s growing like only a stupid fad can. Back on 2/25, I wrote a post bemoaning the fad of barely visible fonts. That foolishness was the beginning of this trend of hiding information. Now, just when you think the dumb can’t get any dumber, we have The Blank Plague.

Today I had planned a post about artificial intelligence, but what’s the point? It’s obvious a great many people involved in web pages don’t have a clue as to what constitutes intelligence. If you’re familiar with the movie Idiocracy, think about this: the stupidity shown in that film is no longer our future, it’s now in our rearview mirror.