![]() As Unix culture knows, the richness that matters most is an emergent property of simple tools that combine in flexible ways to produce network effects. The individual parts can and will grow richer over time, but the new software ecosystem happily lacks the perverse incentives that created the baroque monoliths we're abandoning. When the platform for those applications is the service-oriented Web, the office suite can be reinvented as a loosely coupled set of communicating parts. ![]() What we need instead, and what's starting to appear, is a breed of lightweight single-purpose Web applications for basic tasks: writing, communicating, spreadsheeting, charting.Īs the reaction to WriteRoom proves, there is enormous pent-up demand for applications that do one thing well. We don't need Web re-creations of the feature-bloated monsters that our office suites became. UseCamouflage (Mac) orDropcloth (Windows) to hide the clutter on your desktop, thereby. As the new generation of so-called rich Internet clients arrives, let's be careful what kind of richness we wish for. WriteRoom, allowing you to workinfullscreen mode distraction free. Now with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), the pendulum is swinging back again. The page refresh model was clunky, to be sure, but its minimalism made applications easy to create and easy to use. There were only a handful of core widgets to work with, but that constraint turned out to be profoundly liberating. With the emergence of the Web page as a preferred application style, the pendulum began swinging back toward simplicity. At hospital admitting desks, in accountants' offices and at video retail stores, I watch people perform tasks for which the desktop metaphor - with its cluttered surface and overlapping resizable windows - is at best a distraction and at worst an impediment. Sadly, by inviting us to interrupt ourselves more than necessary, our software tends to contribute more to the problem than to the solution.Ĭonsider the effects of the graphical user interface. We are required to deal with interruptions in ways that vary according to the circumstances of our lives and our work. The paradox, of course, is that interruptions are vital, too. As we perform the intellectual work that powers the information economy, our ability to achieve focus and flow is constantly challenged by distraction and interruption. Recent research has shown what common sense should always have told us: Computers multitask way better than people can. And as a result, I'm reminded yet again how cruelly oxymoronic the phrase productivity software can be. But thanks to WriteRoom's built-in support for some of the basic emacs key bindings, I'm immediately productive with the program. My writing tool of choice will surely remain emacs, that faithful companion of two decades and counting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |