Information and Communication
No one ever actually met or saw the computer operators; it was thought that they came out at night to collect the punch cards and feast on virgin blood...
Today, I was thinking. It is a rare occasion, and admittedly ill-practiced when undertaken, but it does occur every now and again that I have what I consider to be a relatively profound thought, and I frantically write it down before it vacates my brain.
But first, some background is due.
Over the past few days I have been developing a sore throat, stuffed nose and a progressively nasty cruddiness that I hope will run its course rather soon. I see fair weather coming to Chico soon and I'd hate to be senseless and bound indoors for the occasion.
This afternoon in my Information and Communication Technologies class as we were learning rather comprehensively about the underpinning historical and contemporary theories and technologies of the telecommunications field, it hit me that my heavy reliance on today's communication technologies fundamentally alters my perspective of the value and process of creating and consuming information. As my professor was telling us his memories of learning how to program in FORTRAN in 1968 on a computer the size of my house using punch cards created painstakingly one by one by some bizarre and presumably unfriendly mechanized process from (ideally) carefully thought-through handwritten code, I took note of how drastically different my style of code writing and other information creation are from that process he lovingly and nostalgically retold. I've taken for granted the immediacy afforded me by the largely well-crafted communication systems of today, and adapted my thinking patterns to utilize the advantages such systems provide.
I'll try to illustrate a quick example of the rather startling difference between the way I think of things now and the way things used to be, as what I see to be a direct outgrowth of the system to which I am accustomed. As mentioned earlier, programmers of the late 1960s worked with punch cards, which was at the time a considerable improvement over manually setting rows and rows of switches literally meant to signify individual bits needed to compute relatively limited things. The punch cards were made, one by one, by each individual programmer to represent his or her program in a series of several dozen to several hundred cards. Once finished, these cards were bundled up taking care to preserve their order (because dropping them or moving one card out of order meant the program wouldn't work) and brought to a small, dark room with neatly numbered shelves. There was, of course, the one ominous wall with a single, black door behind which whirred the monolithic, mysterious computer and two or three ghostly white and frightfully atrophied (presumably) human beings. No one ever actually met or saw the computer operators; it was thought that they came out at night to collect the punch cards and feast on virgin blood.
It was because of these complications to the process that the individual programmer needed to painstakingly write his or her code before having the opportunity to take advantage of the rather critical human need for feedback: did the program work? If not, why not? Did the bad bald pearly white men spill coffee or chew on my cards? Did I forget a card? Did I forget a punch hole? Invariably, the solution was to go back to square one. Look through each and every line to try to find the error. When you think you've found it, recreate the cards and resubmit the program to the scary little room in the building with no windows. Wait one day for the results. Repeat.
This seems entirely intolerable to me as I am used to an entirely different paradigm, borne of an age of instant feedback. When I write a program, I outline the structure, consider the purpose and design, and dive in. I test the program repeatedly while coding to make sure I'm "on the right track" and do not bog myself down with multiple errors all at once. My coding process involves typing the program out on my computer screen, saving the file, using a program to test my program, and then repeating. The cycle of ideation, creation, testing, modification and improvement is much more immediate.
My primary point is this: due to the immediacy of the feedback, there is much more room for tolerable error in today's computing information systems than those of the past, and this sets the stage for an entirely different way of constructing information. This paradigm accounts for, indeed, encourages, the natural human propensity toward slips while minimizing the impact of these errors in thought processes. Most certainly a marked improvement in communication creation user interfaces. Don Norman should be proud of the improvement.
In addition, the information creation process now frequently takes place, evolves, and is shared over vast distances in real time. New articles are added to CNN.com literally every other minute. Word processors enable us to capture and recapture our thoughts quickly and without the need to be highly accurate typists; ten words, backspace, backspace, two words backspace, backspace, backspace, etc.
As such, the communication channel through which every waking thought flows is increasingly becoming digital. I regard it a waste of time anymore to write out anything that would be better typed and stored in bits and bytes. I can type faster than I can maneuver a pen, and I can cleanly and effectively erase anything I wish to without having to start over. The only things I still consider worth handwriting are good old fashioned correspondence letters (a handwritten note bears a sense of sincerity and invested time that a hastily written e-mail or printed letter does not).
I write my essays within my word processor, without planning what I'm going to say beforehand because I know I can always delete, cut, copy and paste anything I write at any time. My ideas are formulated as I write them, and constantly rearranged and rethought as the essay develops. The structure of this post may give you some sort of idea how my thoughts flow.
I'm running out of intelligent things to say, and having a difficult time honing in on my argument. Hopefully I'll revisit this later.