Social statistics

An old colleague once summed up the benefits of digital technology very succinctly with the phrase: "Once you can digitise something, you then have control over it."

I was reminded of this recently - in a somewhat longwinded manner, admittedly - by a survey that claimed, contrary to the popular view, that internet users were actually more sociable than non-internet users.

Well, what a surprise. The popular view isn't surely with regard to general internet users, but concerns the developers of the technology and the wretched evangelists who make so much noise about it - mercifully somewhat less than they did a few years ago, thanks to the bursting of the dotcom bubble.

Surely, we should expect internet users to be more sociable. I'd certainly expect those with average or better educations and incomes to be more sociable than their less fortunate countrymen. These are, in other words, the people who can most easily feel comfortable with modern technology - and can most readily afford it.

I remember when teaching many years ago, an example we used to cite of one of the bad uses of statistics. This pointed out that there was a close correlation during a period of about three decades between the number of television licences sold in the UK and the number of deaths by road accidents. Only a tabloid journalist might try to suggest, therefore, a causal link between these trends. Remember this before you log on to the internet in an attempt to become more sociable.

The same survey pointed out that these same, more sociable, internet users also watched less television. I've heard this before, with the argument that internet use has drawn people away from TV, but I doubt this is true.

Going down

However, there has been, and I doubt anyone would dispute this, a downward trend in the quality of television content. And would you not expect the better educated and better off of the population to respond to these decreasing standards by watching less of it, whether there was such a thing as the internet or not?

Of course, if you're fed up with modern television, then the internet is a likely medium to attract your attention during leisure time. But being among the better educated and paid in society, you'd have little or no trouble finding other sources of distraction.

The television industry does seem to have headed off in the wrong direction in recent years. In many parts of the media, I've heard variations of the comment to the effect that 'content is king' or quality of content is what matters most. Whether the people saying this have always been able to follow through is a different matter, but at least the sentiment can be applauded.

Digital doldrums

When I first heard about the coming of digital television many years ago, I presumed that such a sentiment would apply and that there would be some logical or causal connection with the concept of high-definition television (HDTV, remember that idea?). I had this simplistic notion that when we had digitised television signals, giving us complete control over the image, this would give much higher quality sound and vision (the TV equivalent of audio's HiFi), which in turn would make viewers more discerning and lead a trend towards better quality programming.

I really looked forward to this, but how naive I was. Instead, what have the television companies given us? Big Brother in multiple languages and dozens of channels of even worse rubbish! No wonder people are using the internet more and watching television less. And notice that this is a trend particularly among the better educated in the population, as you'd expect.

Here is the news

I've been particularly surprised by the drop in standard of the news coverage on western television. Keeping in mind the fact that for the better educated among the population, news is a particularly important component of their viewing time, so you'd have thought the newsmakers in the west would have risen to the very genuine threat posed by the internet.

I make a point of checking news sites from the US, Europe and Asia, and from those with various political leanings - there seem to be so few without any agenda or slant at all. The picture you get in such reading contrasts very dramatically with the narrow, and often highly biased and selective, news reports on western television.

The recent terrorist attacks and war have provided a dramatic illustration of some of these differences. CNN is clearly the worst and is an utter disgrace, but it's not alone. I watched a news report recently on British TV and then went onto the internet in order to get a broader, and hopefully more accurate, picture. If this trend continues, there will soon come a point where there's no need even to bother watching a TV news report.

There's a real sense here that the digitisation of news - on websites worldwide - has given users like myself significant control over news. Instead of a limited choice presented on TV, I can seek out analysis from a variety of points of view. This must be so alien to the likes of CNN, but unless stations like it change, there will be more surveys in future suggesting how the internet is pulling people away from television. It's not, but TV needs to rise to the challenge and start pulling the viewers back in.

A bug's life

A news report about a bug discovered in software isn't the sort of thing that usually makes its way onto the front pages of national newspapers, but that's exactly what I saw on my way into the office on the day that I needed to write this column, before disappearing off on holiday for a couple of weeks.

A major problem had been discovered in Windows XP, so serious that a machine logged onto the internet can be taken over fully by an external hacker. Taken over fully, notice, not just infected or minor access allowed.

A spokesman for the company that discovered the problem, eEye Digital Security, called it "the worst default security vulnerability in Windows ever". Some indictment.

One thing that annoyed me about this is that when I raised this possibility with Microsoft a few months ago - admittedly, I pointed to a different subsystem than the one affected by this bug - the company was quite dismissive about such possibilities, largely because the system had been so thoroughly tested. Right. One wonders what other security issues are waiting to be discovered or exploited.

Okay, every business is defensive about its own products, particularly new ones, but Microsoft has now developed a very bad reputation not only for the apparently endless succession of security flaws in its main software, but also - and perhaps more importantly - for not being open about these flaws or appearing to take these security issues seriously.

Security barrier

It's noticeable that the take-up of Windows XP has been less than many in the industry had expected - or hoped for, considering the state of the industry in general. In addition, Microsoft's appalling record on security must be playing a part in this. It's known to be a factor in many corporates currently looking into Linux; add this to the concerns about the activation requirements of Windows XP, and Microsoft is possibly creating a very large barrier to the success of its own software.

In the newspaper article I read over somebody's shoulder, a Microsoft spokesperson made the point that complex software will always have bugs and problems. This is very true, but is complex software what we need? Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to shake off its bad habits of writing bloated software. Not that the number of features is the problem, but a large number of features stuffed into one package is. And that's just not the way to improve quality.

Radical approach

Microsoft needs to take a radical approach to future software design and modularise its products - both system and applications software. Some modules won't need to be updated very often, others perhaps quite regularly, but isolating functionality in discrete modules makes the whole job of eliminating security problems and bugs much easier to manage.

Microsoft is struggling with the future right now and is considering how to justify sales of new application software, with so many features having already been squeezed into Office. Well, a radical redesign of Windows and Office that offer users a vastly more flexible - choose your own features - and secure system would help. That would drive sales far more effectively than yet another bloated upgrade to Windows and Office, as well as give a clear way forward for the future. But what has Microsoft come up with instead? Product Activation and .Net!

With the system cut up into different components, problems can be isolated and eliminated much more easily. Users can pick and choose the components and functionality they want, and third-party developers are given room to manouevre with scope to develop better or more specialised components.

And with smaller components, they can more readily be sold and updated across the internet. Microsoft, PC users and third-party software developers would all benefit. So, Microsoft, do you have the guts to do it?

Child's play

I've received more than the usual amount of feedback concerning comments I made recently about the dire need for PC and software designers to devote far more time and effort to usability issues. As you might expect, none of this feedback has been along the lines of "let's keep PCs as complex and difficult to use as they are now". However, one reader tended towards defending the current state of technology by pointing out the approach taken by children: "Children are different: no manuals, no notes and no attempt to understand the underlying technology. They only have to see something done once and they remember, and they use computers at school as you and I used pencil and paper."

He tells me I "underestimate the skills of young computer users", but I must say this misses the point somewhat and in no way can justify the appalling lack of usability in modern systems.

Yes, young people do have a different attitude. They're essentially programmed from birth to learn to adapt to the conditions they find around them and use the resources they have to the best. Later, as experience grows, a different set of attitudes takes over and discrimination and choices play a much greater role.

Text message

Look at the way young people use text messaging on a mobile phone. Somebody like myself, used to different systems and expecting technology to move forward, finds great difficulty in understanding the willingness to develop the skill to 'text' properly. ("How come their little fingers don't get cramps?" I've often wondered.)That's what it is - willingness. I'm sure that I could learn to text just as fast - nearly - as most teenagers, but the system seems to me backwards and primitive at present. Sure, I use it, but my messages are always very short.

Hopefully, if the industry moves in the right direction, in a few years' time our current PCs will similarly seem backwards and primitive.

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