Conference hydra::amiga_v1

670.0. "Hypertechnology" by NULL::TORNHEIM () Tue Aug 25 1987 11:57

from VNS News on 25-Aug-1987


                DOES WHOEVER DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WIN?
                          By Lindsy Van Gelder

      Until my friend Richard installed his hard disk, he had regarded me as
   a guru;   I  was first on my block to own a PC back in early 1982;  I had 
   initiated Richard and other  friends into the mysteries of DOS and helped 
   them put their hardware on  speaking  terms with their software.  But now 
   suddenly it was Richard who was  prattling  on about "paths" and "trees", 
   sneering at access times of more than  a  millisecond, and saying that he 
   would rather swim in a suit of armor  than  go  back  to floppy disks.  
   
      I  felt  digitally  dowdy.    
   
      "But I  don't  _need_  40  megabytes," I explained.  "I write magazine 
   articles, not corporate mailing lists.  It takes me _months_ to fill up a 
   floppy!" 
   
      Richard  just  kept  looking superior.  It was a look  I  was  to  get 
   familiar with, as others of my former band of rapt pupils  began to pluck 
   down  cash for AT closes, extended memory, EGA boards, laser printers and 
   2400-baud modems.   And  while  some of them unquestionably _needed_ this 
   stuff to run their  businesses,  a  lot  of  them  seemed to be buying it 
   simply because it was there.  
   
      I'm thinking particularly  of  the friend who bought a new Mac SE with 
   20-megabyte hard disk to store his recipes, but there were plenty of less 
   extreme cases.  I think  we  have an epidemic on our hands;  a culturally 
   transmitted disease that I'll call hypertechnology.  Its major symptom is 
   a fascination with the cutting edge, even  among  those who are likely to 
   get cut to shreds on it.  
   
      Lest you think this is  all  sour  grapes,  listen  to  Dr.  Harold E.  
   Berson, a New York psychiatrist whose  clientele  includes  many  bright, 
   successful people who are hypertechnology victims.   According to Berson, 
   they're a subgenre of the "compulsive, Type A  personality.    They  have 
   very  high standards, and they want to function on  a  very  high  level.  
   Computers  fill all those needs--in another era, these people might  have 
   bought  a  new Mercedes every year.  Now, they upgrade!" They  are  on  a 
   space-age treadmill, says Dr.  Berson, because "the technology changes so 
   fast  that  they'll    never  be  satisfied.    It's  a  losing  game  of 
   one-upmanship." (I won't even  go  into what Dr.  Berson had to say about 
   the real meaning of Throughput  Envy.)  
   
      New York  technical  consultant Jim Kolman, who describes himself as a 
   troubleshooter, sees entire  corporations  infected with hypertechnology.  
   "Usually by the time a business comes to me, it's already been ripped off 
   by  somebody  else,"  says Kolman.    "These  days  vendors  are  selling 
   computers on the basis of superstition,  not  reality.   I've seen people 
   who thought they needed a 3-megabyte AT  to  run  WordPerfect." 
   
      What irks Kolman most is the waste.  "Before the industry explores one 
   technology, it's moving on to the next.  These guys don't have to build a 
   better mousetrap;  all they have to do is change the cheese." 
   
      As a public service,  I'm  presenting  here,  for  the first time, the 
   Seven Warning Signs of Hypertechnology:
   
   1. When you read about new generations of computers, do you look  at your 
      computer  and  see  a  Model T Ford?  Have you ever fantasized  about 
      owning a laptop Cray?
   
   2. Have you, on more than one occasion, had to buy a piece of hardware or 
      software solely to  support  some  other piece of hardware or software 
      that didn't work?
   
   3. Do you lust to  put the records for your entire business on a machine 
      with a chip for which no math coprocessor yet exists?
   
   4. Do you suffer from high  baud  pressure?   Have you bought a 2400-baud 
      modem for the express purpose of  "saving  connect-time dollars," only 
      to find that you use it mostly  to  chat  with  your friends on the CB 
      simulator?
   
   5. Do  you feel it's reasonable to use a streaming tape unit to  back  up 
      the three letters you wrote today?
   
   6. Have  you  thought  of installing a local area network at home so that 
      you and your kids can play LodeRunner?
   
   7. Do  you  think  it  would be nice to have a computer with 256 function 
      keys?
   
   If you answered *yes* more than once, consider yourself a hypertechnology 
   victim.  Spend the weekend locked in  a  small room with a 128K PCjr with 
   one disk drive, and don't come out until  you  find at least half a dozen 
   worthwhile things you can do with it.
    
      You know who you are.