woodward@the780.DEC (Mike Woodward) (08/27/87)
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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 clones, 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.
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