In July I did some work for a computer-industry veteran who had an idea for a new business: Selling a product based on recent research in an exciting and active new area of science. You would recognize his name, but he doesn't want any premature publicity for his business -- whose prospects now look pretty grim, anyway -- so I'll just call him Will.
Will had done his homework: He had lined up a respected professor doing significant work in this area of science at a prestigious school, who would act as technical consultant and lend his name to the product; he had researched the legal implications of the business; he had analyzed production issues, including how to maintain laboratory-level quality control; he had talked to potential suppliers; and he had written a business plan. When he was confident that he had his act together, he called researchers at the leading research institute in this area of science, and arranged to meet them to discuss his plans. The support of this institute was critical to Will's business plan, because it was the only source of certain components of the product he wanted to sell. He explained to them, rather eloquently I think, how his product would raise public consciousness regarding their work, begin the vital process of educating the public about this important area of science and the vast potential it has for improving the quality of life, even for extending the human life span.
Cold is the word for the reaction he got: The researchers, including the Nobel laureate who directs the lab, are afraid of adverse public reaction to their work. Paranoia springs eternal in the human breast -- and is usually justified, too. The researchers harbor the conviction that the public has little interest in science other than a blind, unreasoning fear of it; and they back up their conviction with empirical data.
I am inclined to think that Will's product would have had a healthy effect, raising public awareness of important scientific issues. I can't say that the researchers were wrong, though; ignorance and fear feed one another, and the general public is ignorant and fearful of modern science. But isn't it obvious that the place to break the cycle is with kids? Where are the chemistry sets and science kits that past generations of American kids grew up with? Computers are technology, not science, but they are also a delivery medium for getting science into the home. That's what Will wanted to do. I hope some of you want the same thing and have better luck.
I'm launching a newsletter devoted to HyperCard issues, a sort of Writer's Digest for the stackware market, with scripting tutorials and advanced user information. (Anyone interested can get more information from me at Card Tricks, 31 Patrick Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95060.) It was while considering how best to review stacks for the newsletter that I confronted the dilemma (for a reviewer, anyway) that software is becoming less like cameras and more like movies. The appropriate response for computer magazines, at least for computer software magazines, is to become less like camera magazines and more like film magazines.
It's still of some value to tick off the features and run the benchmarks, of course. PC Magazine has made a fortune for Ziff-Davis with those huge tables of checkmarks detailing every tallyable fact about every laser printer paper tray.
But the more subjective aspects of software evaluation are growing in importance. Depth, general appropriateness to the task, ease of use and learning, responsiveness, and intuitiveness have always been able to make or break a product, regardless of the number of checkmarks it got in the feature tables. For some games, responsiveness and realism are everything. But for many products it is becoming increasingly important to deliver a well-crafted work rather than a bag of nifty features.
It might not be stretching definitions too far to say that it's the difference between reviews and criticism. Henry James, who was both author and critic, said, "The practice of 'reviewing' ... has nothing in common with criticism .... To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish ... a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own." The software authors of the 1990s will deserve criticism, and there is no such thing in computer publishing today. There could be. There should be.
Copyright © 1989, Dr. Dobb's Journal