It's black. I like black.
It has a screen you can pick up with one hand easily (like Shuttle's) -- and it goes from portrait to landscape mode like an iPhone. The screen is like that SONY electronic book reader, but better. No flicker rate, no refresh, no blinky-blink at all. Text on the display looks exactly like it does on a piece of paper. Paintings look like an archival quality photo of the canvas. Photos look like they do in a gallery, except without the glare.
It comes with a little box that looks like one of those mini-itx computers: it's about the size of a mass-market paperback, but it's a little wider, for a CD or DVD (data -- you'll see why in a minute) slot.
The keyboard is nice and full-featured. Typing on it is like tapping a touch screen. It might even be a touch screen. No mouse -- I prefer a trackball (easier on the wrist.). Classy look, but practical. Pressing down on the ball changes its responsive capability. Squeezing the side of the base a certain way resets the tracking action to "glassy." It never slows the more you use it, like trackballs I've used (and quit). Both are wireless. And both are computers.
The screen is a computer, too. They're all networked. The mini-itx thing is the server. You can use it as the home-system server, or as a hub in a larger one, or as a virtualizer, or database host, or whatever else servers do now. You'd just have one of your own. That you could turn off and stick in your coat pocket.
You'd type in a simple code and your machine would access everything you need. The security would be the machine's responsibility, not yours. You'd just know how to use your machine responsibly and safely, like driving a car (all my readers are safe drivers, naturally!)
There would be one basic program on your computer -- hypertext. Think about it: no Internet as we know it, no browsers, no search engines, no fiddling around hoping you find something. All that (and much more) is already in the hypertext spec. Your operating system would be like the inside of your TV -- no user-serviceable parts. A book or article? Let hypertext find it. A painting or photo? Switch to hypermedia mode, and then do the same.
What, no movies? No music? Those are add-ons. The players could be the same size as your server, even stackable on it. You could disconnect them (with a command -- everything's wireless), stick one in your coat pocket or a pouch with a miniature display, and watch a movie on the bus. Slide it into a bay in your car's dashboard and listen to recorded music or broadcast programming. Phone call? Pull out the itty-bitty earbud thingy or talk to the dashboard, and you're communicating. GPS? You've got it already. Use it with your widescreen TV? No problem.
Hey, iPods, Zunes, TiVOs -- we're almost there now, right?
Wrong! Take hypertext. We don't use it. It was invented in the 1960s, and we still don't use it. What's "http" ...? Hypertext Transfer Protocol. But we use it to transfer marked-up rich text, not hypertext. Rich text is what I'm using now: plain text that's networkable, with some extra word-processing features -- in other words, when it was invented it was considered (I suppose) feature-"rich." There are efforts now to upgrade that standard, but they don't involve anything significant like hypertext -- at least how hypertext has been described to me.
Hypertext would BE the graphic user interface. Your OS would be like the BIOS now on your computer's main chip. Embedded. Maybe you'd access a few settings now and then, after consulting a manual. But not something you'd mess with ordinarily. Software would be something you'd add yourself -- I don't want to put the software companies out of business. I just don't want them hosting my computer, and limiting me as to what I can and can't do with it. That's what laws are for. (And I don't mean liberty-limiting or freedom-denying laws. I mean, like driving on the right side of the road, knowing what a stop sign is for, etc.)
I can hear the screaming from Redmond and Cupertino already. Hey, Bill and Steve -- don't get mad at me! We're all about the same age, and I do like your stuff! I just want my home computer to be what I want -- a convenient and compact electronic library for my home. It would have my stuff in it (like a filing cabinet or a bookshelf), and it would "go to the (public) library" for me. The machine could still do spreadsheets and word processing and graphic design, and it would let me play music or movies or 3-D games on it. Software companies could make a lot of money selling me stuff to put on my computer that would extend its capabilities in responsible directions I choose. They could sell me the media players or gameboxes, even the hardware with their OS built in as "firmware." But it would do what (within the "driving-on-the-right-hand-side-of-the-road" law) I want.
What I've got now is a fixed-screen spreadsheet reader with an expensive OS that has "accessories," solitare games but fewer features than the business version has. I have to buy or go to considerable time and trouble to download software just to get it to attempt to do what I need. The machine is heavy, clunky, and I have to buy furniture just for it -- wires hang everywhere to connect to "peripherals" that do only what the manufacturer of each peripheral device wants me to do with it. They're not real computer "dispositives" designed to do, within their design limits, what I need them to do.
I'm no disciple of Richard Stallman, whose vision I feel largely benefits academe. I'm no rabid fan of Linus Torvalds, whose work mainly represents the interests of computer engineers. Henry Ford gave my great-grandfather's generation a car they could, with hard work and vision, afford to buy. It was rugged and could take them places where they could not easily ride a horse-driven coach. And you could set the transmission (with an attachment) to churn butter! My grandfather learned to drive it as a teen, and he stayed out of the WWI trenches as a Marine by using that driving skill to steer generals around in a Jeep. I'm not some off-the-left-wall wacko! My family taught me their values as bedrock Republicans -- both sides! It's been nearly a hundred years since the A Model!* Where's the Computer Age's A Model? Where?
But what I want takes software called "hypertext." And, as far as I know, no machine currently manufactured for the consumer can run it. Why?
___
*I may have been thinking about the T-model Ford. I'm not sure if the original A Model (the one with the turning lever instead of a wheel) had a butter churn accessory. Jeeps also did not exist as such in WWI, but I think my grandfather may have driven some type of “General Purpose” or GP vehicle then. Trackballs must be cleaned regularly. I left "solitaire" misspelled, as it was in the original.
LJ orig.: 09/06/07
No comments:
Post a Comment