Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew
From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: the interface for the rest of us?
Message-ID: <Di6k23w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 7 May 91 16:40:36 GMT
References: <cc9NZSu2aUKcMhjpE_@hercules>
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 60

urban%hercules@RAND.ORG (Michael Urban) writes:
>                                              To this day, I think that
> computer use took a bad turn somewhere in the late sixties.
[...]
>                                                              More memory
> and faster processing just means more and bigger forms.  

This is because bureaucracy takes advantage of the new technology in order to
increase its own power and importance, rather than to increase its
efficiency and decrease its impact on our lives.

Bureaucrats ask for data they don't need because they can afford to store it
away in the hope that it will be useful to them at a later date; or because
it makes them look important; or because it allows them to have one enormous
handle-everything form instead of several smaller ones.

Unfortunately, there aren't enough people willing to say "you don't need to
know that".

Example:

I have a standing order set up at my bank to pay the rent on the house I live
in. The set amount is automatically debited from my account each month and
credited to the landlord's account.

Recently, some sort of change required that the rent be increased by 94p. I
went along to the bank, and asked them to make the change.

The drone behind the counter handed me a form. I filled in my name and
address, the name of the destination account and destination bank, and wrote
an instruction to increase the amount by 94p. (I listed both the old amount
and the new amount.)

I signed the form and handed it back. The drone explained that I needed to
fill in my account number and bank sort code, the destination bank account
number and sort code, and the addresses of both banks.

Now, a lot of people would have given in and filled in all that information.
I didn't, partly because I was too lazy to go home and look up the details.

I explained that they had enough information to find my account details --
there can't be that many people called "mathew" in their database, and there
will only be one at the address I had written down. I wasn't giving them any
extra work, since they have to find the details anyway to cancel or amend the
old standing order. And they damn well ought to know their own address
anyway.

The next protest from the drone was that they needed to make sure they didn't
change the wrong standing order. Fair enough; I explained that there were
only two standing orders, that they were to different names and bank
accounts, and that they differed by two orders of magnitude. I had given the
name, bank name and amount, so there was no chance for confusion.

The drone went away and checked with a superior. The superior nodded. I left
them to deal with it.


mathew