Who said consumerization of IT would be all good?
I certainly didn’t. It is happening and you either get with the program or . . . .
Case in point
I was doing an on line search for the zone info on hard drives. App note? Disk manual? Nope.
Only these info-free PDFs that have as little information as possible.
Things were different at DEC
Ken Olsen, DEC’s founder, believed in giving customers lots of free info about DEC products: instruction sets, interface specs, component operation, whatever. The company printed up millions of VAX Architecture Manuals which described the VAX instruction set. I made sure all my customers had them, and they seemed to appreciate the manuals.
It took me a while to figure out why. It wasn’t like they ever opened them.
Soldiers have ribbons and medals. Professors have diplomas and books. Medical doctors have lab coats and stethoscopes. VCs have exotic cars and jets.
What do IT workers have? Bookshelves in their cubicles. Loaded with fat books. Fat books with TLA-heavy titles bespeaking arcane knowledge and powerful IT juju.
Have you ever seen a well-worn book on cubicle bookshelf?
I haven’t. And why? If the guy needed to look at the book, why is he getting paid? The unthumbed book says “see this big fat computer book I’ve never opened? I know all that stuff already! “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Like the passing of Middle Earth, the old ways are dying
Is your salesman handing you architecture manuals? Not likely. And why? Because technology no longer sells technology. Features and benefits sell technology to people who don’t understand technology and – gasp – don’t need to. If you can’t show a six month ROI, don’t even open your mouth. If you can, who cares what the technology is?
The hearts of men are weak. Their minds aren’t much better.
I like the arcana of tech, of all kinds. I know what a sodium-filled exhaust valve is and how it works. I prefer timing chains over belts. I will never, if I can help it, buy an automatic transmission. Web presses (Web 0.2?), lasers, mercury delay lines, Turing machines, DSPs, DLPs, DLTs, and I love DTS. In a consumer world though, there is no need to satisfy the curiosity of people like me. Or you.
Tech writers are expensive. They slow down developers. And who reads their manuals anyway?
If it isn’t as obvious as an iPod, back to the drawing board.
Consumerization of IT is going to unleash some great stuff. It already has. But one downside is that getting technical information about how the thing works and what it is made of is going to be up to the users. We have allies in the design engineers, who love an appreciative audience.
The StorageMojo take
Making stuff that just works is wonderful. Yet I like to know how it works. Less and less time and money are being devoted to explaining how stuff works as IT becomes less like magick and more like plumbing. Enjoy learning about tech while you can. Another 20 years and the workings of most tech devices will be shrouded, not in secrecy, but in ignorance.
Comments welcome as always.
I read an article (which sadly I now can’t find) that made commented between the differences between “analysts” and “architects” (I believe these were the terms used).
The (bad) analysts tended not to have a good understanding of the underlying technologies, and often did a lot of hand waving and talked about ‘efficiencies’ and ‘synergies’. The (good) architects knew and understood the underlying technology (down to the wire protocol level sometimes), and were able to design things properly because they knew how everything interacted. They really good architects were able to explain things from the whiteboard-block-diagram level all the way down to the protocol level.
It may not be necessary to know how the bits are packed in a message block or the state machine for an algorithm for everyday usage, but if you’re building some that is a decent size and of modest complexity then it’s best to know how things work. The initial setup may be “plug and play”, but if things break there better be someone around that can drill down into things and find what’s wrong.
I am an old-school technical writer. I like to sit down with the engineer to ask “why” and “how.” I have taken programming courses. I want to speak the engineer’s language so he or she will reciprocate and be willing to release those precious technical details to me.
But don’t get used to this kind of thing, boys and girls. The tech writers that are coming up from the fancy Information Development programs at our universities are more interested in delivering snazzy web-enabled movies than they are in telling you how something works. I’m a dinosaur, I fear. The trend is form over substance, delivered on a brightly colored CD-ROM. Those CDs are now starting to collect that same cubicle dust, just as those yellowing three-ring binders once did.
Yes, nothing comes with good docs any more. But many products today are built out of components that are either documented or open source, so it’s relatively easy to understand/servicce/hack them. It’s a sign of just how low things have sunk that people are celebrating Apple because they are not threatening lawsuits against those who tinker with their own AppleTVs.
All hail the high priest’s and potentates of Technobia!
Yes – it is interesting to a few to know and understand the gossamer entrails of the technologies we employ. Mental Masturbation. Joy!
However, it is expensive to companies to let their “Need a shave, shower and a comb priesthood” the latitude to twiddle. It usually cannot be reused, takes time to maintain, AND, should the high potentate of bits run off to some other sanctuary, the IP goes with him.
Ugh.
Do I need my people to see the guts? Nope. Not one bit. Just craft solutions with the building blocks that serve the needs of the business. Not their personal desire to see God in the bit stream.
Nice Blog, BTW!
All,
Great range of comments. The one thought I have is that some companies will figure out that having a dedicated and enthusiastic community of unpaid developers is a Good Thing. Look at how quickly a community has sprung up to hack Apple TV.
I’d personally never try to hack ATV, but once I read enough success stories about things that I care about, sure, I’m willing to get my hands dirty. I’m not in the top 1%, but maybe in the top 10%. And what does Apple get? Free engineering protos and lots so market research, maybe even a few hires. It is the hardware equivalent of open source.
As for StoragePro’s comment, spoken like a true corporate drone, if corporate drones were poets. Engineers like to be appreciated by people they deem capable of appreciating them. It is a potent form of non-cash compensation. I think it is a win all around: the company gets free stuff; the engineers get stroked; the hardcore users get mastery. A virtuous cycle if ever there was one.
Robin