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From: bzs@BU-CS.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Where are the small thinkers now that we can't use them?
Message-ID: <8710242135.AA18129@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Sat, 24-Oct-87 17:35:31 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.8710242135.AA18129
Posted: Sat Oct 24 17:35:31 1987
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Re: Greg Earle's discussion provocater about the information/software
explosion threatening to sink us all.

I realize my Subject: was provocative and don't really mean to say
that the "small is beautiful" crowd is obsolete, just that no one
seems to be listening to them anymore. As Greg points out things like
window and document systems (X, NeWS, TeX, InterLeaf et al) are
behemoths of complexity and it doesn't look like anyone is offering
any choice in the matter. By `choice', of course, I mean alternatives
not just flames like "they're big, they stink!" which isn't really
much of an answer except perhaps from god (pandora's box and all that,
can't just tell the users to go back to dumb terminals and Model 34
teletypes, at least not without dabbling in demagoguery.)

My first (and sustained) reaction to TeX, for example, was Blecch (as
in "rhymes with".) Most fanatics of course view only the use of the
system itself. My systems staff and I got to put it up and view with
wonderment a 10,000 line single WEB (what's that?) module become a
15,000 line (something like that) single Pascal module. Then get
undump to work on every system that people were screaming for it on,
then suffer the various utilities (the font managers, the fonts,
metafont, pxl fonts, pk, gf, dvi, bibtex, latex, slitex, lplain,
detex, dvi2ps, amstex, magsteps, computer modern, etc, etc, etc.)

I decided I knew a house of cards when I saw one and this would not be
where *my* papers were going, even if it prevented me from having the
most wonderful sigmas ever seen. It just wasn't that important.  The
current apparent weaknesses of Tex in previewing (yes, I've seen the
systems, they all look very silly to me) and postscript standards
(sure, some people are getting along, but I don't get the impression
that postscript and TeX mesh very well, not at all sure why, font
philosophy I assume is one reason) seem to be showing some current
problems in TeX's ability to move into the present.

I'm not surprised, it is typical of such behemoths of complexity, they
are predictably lead-footed. In an attempt to appeal as some sort of
standard they define everything in terms of the current
state-of-the-art and cannot deliver on this rarified clarity as the
world around them changes.

Although I am picking on TeX (justified, in my opinion) I don't think
it stands alone. As I said, it's just typical of such arrogance.

To prognosticate I believe two things will happen:

	1. People will appear who have better vision as to the
	underlying principles (it just *seems* like placing characters
	on a page shouldn't take several multi-hundred page volumes to
	explain, for example.) From this entire new approaches will
	obsolete the old. We are just in a rococo stage of affairs with
	these technologies which is normal in scientific progressions
	(first simple attempts, then 'great works' attempting to cover
	all ground by detailed case, then underlying principles are
	discovered and the field is reduced to a few fundamental tenets.)

	2. We will see more use of "information appliances" as the Mac
	claimed to be. Turnkey packages will take care of these relatively
	mundane matters (eg. getting the kerning right.) People will tend to
	use tools which match their jobs and be satisfied with the lack
	of micro-creativity in return for some stability and simplicity. With
	any luck people will get back to the original goal (saying something
	useful rather than spending all one's effort making it look pretty,
	needless to say I've had it with font weenies.)

Well, that should be enough for one sitting.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University