People say, "Oh, I need technology". Others tout technology as a juggernaut to which you must submit. Why? Because they have something to sell you!

Treason cannot succeed, or noone will call it treason [chuckles from the Peanut Gallery].

Venture Capitalists were created by the Security Exchange Commission, he explained, in 1931 after the stock market crash of '29. Searching for a scapegoat, enter the "rotton scoundrels who sold stock to widows and orphans". The Security Exchange Commission decided we needed a Banker - Broker team, and so entered the Venture Capitalists.

Companies are going public at a lower cost by doing business on the Internet, stuff they don't want you to know about on Madison Avenue.

A friend of his commented that he had to stop using his PC. Ted asked him why? To which the man replied, "it got full!" [more chuckles from the Peanut Gallery].

The reaction to the World Wide Web has been: Where did we go wrong?

Links are just a never-ending foam of popping bubbles!

Ted began to reminisce about funding of days gone by, many years ago he introduced the term Hypertext and eventually received corporate funding to continue his work, until the CEO lost the vision, which was interpreted by the corporation as suddenly finding focus! [he threw his hands to the air as the Peanut Gallery laughed through our tears].

Tim Berners Lee [creator of HTML as in HyperText Markup Language] came to meet Ted in his office at Autodesk, the morning that Ted found out his funding for the Xanadu Project had been cancelled, swept aside in favor of leaping typefaces and streaming what-not. So they never had a meeting-of-the-minds as he had hoped.

Content, he lamented, has become completely subsidiary to display. Using the Netscape Modzilla philosophy, just keep adding on. In 1981 people were seduced by the Mac and WYSIWYG.

WYSIWYG "What You See Is What You Get", he spelled out for us, ... but I'm already Seeing it, he exclaimed loudly, so what do I Get?

You can get a print out on paper. So the Mac becomes a paper simulator. They dumbed down the most brilliant technology of the 20th Century, so Xerox Management could understand it! [big laugh from the Peanut Gallery].

Something the "man on the street" could understand, they would say. But, Ted asked plaintively, who exactly is the man on the street, .. a wino? [some of the Peanut Gallery now holding their sides].

Waiting for the peals of laughter to die down, he continued.

Remove the wings from a PC, and turn it into a paper simulator and you create a nightmare of inane, trivial obsession.

Structure = Sequence and Harmony

The next step was applications began to grow, as THEY learned how to trap the user!

Claris would say to him, "Now loading Map .. Now loading Mortgage Analyzer". He wasn't sure how to get at those things, but it fills up a CD so they can't sell it on floppy!

In the bizarre Application World, he explained calmly, Bill Gates is not the enemy [grumbles began]. Who else is a CEO and still knows what it's about? After all, it crashes less than the Mac! [grumbles turned to giggles].

Hierarchical File Structure has become Folders, Wow! [he paused for sarcastic effect] Does this mean Human Freedom? No, just funny pictures that are supposed to be reassuring because they say so. He commented that in 1986 he wrote a piece called, "The Tyrrany of the File".

In 1947 someone decided on a big, fixed lump filled with big, fixed data and a big, fixed name. In every concept out of hundreds, everyone wants data that can build on a central concept. We get caught in the special tweaks only understood by highly paid people who are paid to understand it!

In 1960 he had a view of a non-sequential, free-form world of media. Not anachronistic, but reusable. To be able to find a chunk of data, without losing the connection to the original source. He dealt with issues of human creativity and the ability to reconstitute in 20 years. But instead, he lamented, we have flocks of T-shirt clad hippies, all trying to knock each other out of the race.

Illustrating his next point by drawing a picture of the famous "sign of the fish", he asked us to consider, What is it? Then to what Category does it belong? Is it religious? Is it culinary?

Hierarchy assumes only one way of looking at something. Everyone agrees God did not create computers, and probably doesn't use one, so [he gestured toward heaven] there is no religious obligation to use one!

He drew three fishes in separate columns to continue illustrating his point.

He explained to us, gesturing to the fish. Now we have a new way of looking at the same data.

Today's software, he continued, is either made by a demented person or a demented committee. He commented aside that he would rather prefer a demented human, at least there is some purity there [more chuckles from the Peanut Gallery].

The Evolution of Software Design

Ted commented that his contention with software design is that it amounts to the same thing as movie-making, in that we are still at the stage of power fights!

Why are video games designed better than office software? [he paused for dramatic effect].

Because, he proclaimed, designers of games like to play, but the guy designing office software doesn't actually have to use the stuff! [hearty laugh from an enthusiastic Peanut Gallery].

ZigZag