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VOLUME 2, ISSUE 5 PSYCHNEWS INTERNATIONAL Oct-Dec 1997
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SECTION 2: EDITORIAL
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FACE THE INTERFACE:
THE MYTH OF COMPLETE COMPATIBILITY AND THE SPLITTING OF CAMPS
BY RECENT TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Another year has passed--the year of 1997. In the Computer and
Internet world, some people equate 3 real months as a research-
and-development (R&D) year, so we may as well look back on the
equivalent of 24 months R&D time. This time, again, has been
marked by continuous major hardware and software advancements
so rapid and numerous that common adjectives used in journals,
magazines or periodicals -- such as "skyrocketing", "speedy",
"swift" and so forth -- to describe this phenomenon of seeming-
ly unceasing progress have reached inflationary status. On the
other hand, computer critics have also become more cautious to
prematurely label new technology as "revolutionary" or "innova-
tive", until it has stood the tests of time and practice. After
all, we do not consider it mere coincidence that the publica-
tion you are reading right now -- the PsychNews International
-- either online such as on a website or offline like in a
mailing program or as a printout is still (and will, for a con-
siderable time, stay) based on the most popular and one of the
most basic Internet services that have remained very much un-
changed over the years: Emailing.
The purpose of this writing is to point out that technolo-
gical interfaces that change over time with ongoing hardware
and software progress may reach a stage in which dead ends,
forced choices and oversystematically channeled information and
communication opportunities are preprogrammed to increase. This
could lead to parallel developments with unproductive doubling
of administrative overhead, redundancy in the use of resources,
and split the so-called global village into multiple villages
that may or may not interconnect well.
An example where the impact is grave, although not on connect-
edness, are the announcements of two major international
statistics and mathematics software suppliers to concentrate
product development on certain platforms at the expense of
others.
More threatening are the changes that the World Wide Web (WWW)
has undergone. Even during and before 1996, WWW access problems
were not fully solved as reflected in the frame-noframe and
text vs. graphics-enhanced versions of many websites. Also,
important basic features of web design always tended to be
neglected, such as intuitive navigation features and "wise
webbing" for color-blind and disabled users. In comparison to
the recent dilemma, these pitfalls are relatively minor. The
newly advanced technologies almost force individual users into
choosing between specific soft- and hardware. This phenomenon
is rooted in factors or controversies such as: The war of the
web browsers (mainly the 4.x versions of the Netscape Communi-
cator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer), the status of Java
and JavaScript, the officialization of the Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML) 4.0 standard that has outpaced the majority of
current websites and web browers that are largely based on pre-
vious standards. Keeping track of all developments to ensure
that "complete compatibility", quickly goes beyond the capacity
of webmasters and web designers that do not do this for a
living -- e.g. content-providing and website-managing psycholo-
gists and psychiatrists may have to choose among alternatives
that would exclude segments of the Internet population from
access.
Complete compatibility is one of the many myths of the computer
world that has had its share in keeping the computer program-
ming industry alive by providing more Macintosh(TM) or Win-
dows(TM) look-and-feels, more cross-plattform applications,
more software emulators, more promises... and more and more
specifics and details need to be taken into consideration if
_sufficient_ compatibility is to be ensured.
Similar changes are on the horizon regarding communication
infrastructures and superstructures. The philosophy of inter-
connectivity has been partially undermined by the emergence of
diverse closed intranets using the Internet technology --
which, not to be misunderstood, should not be judged as some-
thing "wrongful" or "evil", but as a phenomenon of trans-
porting good productivity tools into new contexts with changed
meanings as a by-product of diversification and development.
Parallel structures with bottlenecking gateways may also arise
with the advent of new Internet address styles (new domains and
subdomains), and Internet-like broadband ventures or large pro-
prietary networks. New open supernet and subnet structures also
exist in the minds of many networking developers.
The "habituation time" to get used to available technologies
that may quickly become outdated spans by far a greater time
interval than the speed of the industry dictates. However, I
assert that we always need to keep in mind that information and
communicational technologies or computing as such are mere "in-
struments" for the PsychNews readership and most other Internet
users. Once enticed to continuously upgrade, update, optimize
configurations and to tune, many have fallen -- at least tempo-
rarily -- into the trap of turning the tool into the purpose.
One key of prevention could be "downward compatibility" in the
sense of holding on to time-proved conventions, and cultivating
existing means and quasi-standards that have been reliable over
time: Like emailing for private use and public spaces, and web
design based on the previous standards HTML 2.0 and 3.2. The
plain usenet newsgroup and mailing list format for discussion
and information acquisition and distribution likewise have not
reached their full potentials yet, let alone profitable usage
of chat services for real-time professional meetings or wide-
spread ftp usage as central pickup points for "psych"-related
documents and data. There is still much worth to be done at the
grassroots technical level.
Rather than rushing into initially exciting fads and fashions,
no matter how appealing, we need to watch emerging developments
both critically and openly, hold on to "technology that works"
and fill existing physical niches with the content needed to
have a more rewarding time on the Net for research and practice
aims. This is not a Credo to good old times, nor am I proposing
to go backward, but to step back for taking "a closer look from
the distance". Technology must provide the interfaces to allow
cumulative and productive growth of connectedness. If newer in-
terfaces --programs, techniques or computers-- restrict rather
than enhance communication and information access potentials,
_we_ must create the compatibility needed for the wanted syner-
gistic effects, by reflecting what our common denominators are,
and what it is that is really important to us: Staying toge-
ther or falling apart -- technical state-of-the-art interfaces
or enriched human interactions.
Sunkyo Kwon, Dipl.-Psych.
PsychNews Editor-in-Chief