A rchive Date
[ 30-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Computers ]
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[Our user unfriendly computerized world
By HARTLEY STEWARD
Toronto Sun
May 30, 2000
We are all pretty impressed with how fast the world has been taken over by new technology. Every day, more of our lives are impacted by the capacity of computers.
Business has surrendered completely to the wiles of cyberspace and there is very little in the entertainment world which has not been invaded by digital technology. I feel like someone from the last century every time I pick up a book.
Governments in all but the most backward nations have turned to computers, with their almost unlimited memory, to keep track of citizens. Construction of even the most simple structures is computer-based. Even the small mom-and-pop operation has been convinced a computer in at least one part of the business is necessary to remain competitive.
Try getting hold of some of your money without interacting with a computer at least through a second party.
We are in the awesome grasp of this relatively new wonder; at its mercy, so to speak.
Yet so much of what we accept is pretty shoddy stuff. Most of the operating systems marketed for both Apple and Microsoft products have been disastrous on launch. Entire manuals used to be published following the release of some systems that were devoted to teaching the consumer to overcome the system's weaknesses.
Many companies, admittedly in the earlier days, converted their entire production operations to computer-based systems which were so unreliable they had to install taped messages announcing when the system was about to crash. Anyone who has been there will remember those systems crashed with frightening and irritating regularity.
Several of Microsoft's Windows launches should have included a warning notice announcing this was experimental software. So much of it was wrong, you wonder just how it escaped the factory. It's hard to conceive of any other industry that could survived the introduction of such unreliable merchandise.
It's not just Microsoft. I'm writing this on an Apple iMac, which, while positively sexy in design, hangs at every opportunity and has a keyboard so small there wasn't room on it for a forward delete key. You have to wonder how this could happen so late in the game.
The entire industry seems to have been issued a leniency pass. We seem to have been prepared to forgive these guys anything including some very harmful trespasses. It's a bit like the monkey playing the piano: It's not that he does it well, but that he does it at all.
Everything was so incomprehensible to most of us that we were dazzled by it - even in its most rudimentary form.
Manufacturers understood this - indeed, still understand it - and exploited it shamelessly. We have learned to accept programs, games and systems which in any other industry would have been laughed off the shelves.
Too, someone in the business should have been arrested years ago - certainly sued successfully - over the issue of security.
Somehow Silicon Valley convinced corporations to turn over operation of the businesses on which the economies of the world depend to computerized systems which can be sabotaged by any teenage hacker of limited talent.
I think if we ever really knew how vulnerable is the world's economy, we would quake in our boots. How quickly could a vandal plunge the financial world into chaos were he to gain control over the computers which operate, say, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Dow?
Governments are collecting and storing information about us that we have every right to expect will be kept confidential. In fact, we might as well order the information published. No one really concerns himself with the security of these electronic storage bins, least of all the manufacturer. They are open at a touch to any average hacker.
It would not have taken much foresight to realize that vandals, ever alert for destructive opportunities, would look wide-eyed at the Web, connecting as it does computers around the world. It is irresistible in its possibilities.
Yet according to the experts it's a simple operation to launch a virus onto the Internet that can cause billions of dollars in damage at hundreds of sites. It seems no one saw fit, even, to create and install sure-fire tracking devices that would act as a deterrent to further vandalism.
I think much of these difficulties have been brought about by the lack of competition in the high-tech industry and the predatory behavior of Bill Gates. Microsoft Corp.'s dominant position - monopolistic position, according to the U.S. courts - has meant it has been possible to ignore the normal business concerns of quality and customer protection.
We have not been served well by the emergence of Microsoft as such a huge force in the marketplace. My guess is that when the company is broken up, we will see a return to traditional market forces and the consequent increase in quality and concern for the customer.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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