Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ncar!tank!mimsy!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: modern terminals (was: printf, data presentation)
Message-ID: <9325@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 10 Jan 89 03:16:13 GMT
References: <19@xenlink.UUCP> <7328@chinet.chi.il.us> <144@bms-at.UUCP> <992@vsi.COM> <11072@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <5175@lynx.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 23

In article <5175@lynx.UUCP> m5@lynx.UUCP (Mike McNally) writes:
>Wyse 50's cost just a little over $300.  I'd like to see you in a
>meeting with my manager trying to convince him that it's a good idea to
>spend six times more on your terminal than everyone else's.
>I must say that I think higher productivity is realized from a nice
>multi-window environment, but because I cannot easily quantify the
>benefits I cannot demonstrate bottom-line advantages of nice
>workstation-type terminals.

And there seems to lie the real problem:  Harvard Business School-
trained managers with their typically short-term, "bottom line",
mentality.  How, indeed, is one to reduce the advantages of
increased flexibility and convenience to a specific dollar value?
How much advantage is it to be able to do things in a totally new
way, when there is no way to assign ANY cost to that way in the
old environment (since the way is impossible there)?  It is clear
that rationally, economic considerations should take these global
factors into consideration, but inability to quantify them in a
nice neat matrix form does not mean that they cannot be considered.

Perhaps the solution is for practical people who nevertheless have
vision to find work environments where they can flourish rather
than be under the thumb of unimaginative management.