This is Mindsets in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 13-Sep-1991 11:49:27 From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) Subject: Mindsets (was Re: The need for speed) In article <1991Sep13.014322.20634@montana.portal.com> reynolds@montana.portal.com (Jack Reynolds) writes: >PC and Mac people are foolish. This is the *extremely* abbreviated list, of course. :-) It would be a mistake -- a marketing mistake too, I suppose -- to discount any potential customer's mindset. It's a variously defined starting place, which is not entirely awful, from a selling point of view: knowing where they are when you start your pitch. But this is a side point. >Let me give an example. I was at a dealer open house for >NeXT recently. I spent 30 minutes showing a Mac user how he >could double and triple his productivity by using a NeXT in >a publishing environment. He was amazed. Finally, after >much consternation, he concluded that he couldn't afford to >switch to NeXT because he would loose the $15,000 he had >invested in his Mac fonts. To this I replied, "I know what >you mean. I don't want to go to heaven because I'll have to >leave my new car behind." Car, hell! -- I don't want to go to heaven because you have to die! :-) But it's a wonderful example of something that I think *is* important, relating back to being where the customer is (like it or not). $15,000 worth of fonts, when compared to $100,000 worth of new business or trebling your average productivity, is peanuts. What you're dealing with here, and I'd be surprised if nobody at NeXT is thinking about this, is attitudes. Some attitudes simply cannot be changed; people are the way they are, and those who've invested -- not so much money as ego -- in being a certain way are going to be hard nuts to sell on anything new. They're natural conservatives, more concerned about where they've been than about where they're headed. George Bush would not have been Orville Wright's first passenger, if he'd been at Kitty Hawk. >When is NeXT going to realize that they are not in the >personal computer/ professional workstation/ computer >business? NeXT is in the productivity and mind expansion >business. A different yardstick applies. I wouldn't so much disagree with that as point out that selling into a mass market means using the customer's yardstick, not yours. It's certainly true that new technology establishes new measures of achievement. I would shy away from the word productivity, even, apart from its appeal as a current marketing clich'e. Your other point, I think, is *much* stronger: the tools let you use your mind a new way, which I think goes *far* beyond traditional notions of productivity. >I don't argue with PC and Mac users anymore. I crush them >in the workplace. Ah, these young people, full of vim and vigor, crushing the competition. :-) But it's a good point, really: what we can manage to do with really good tools -- and the skills and judgment that are central to using them effectively -- can leave others (including our former selves) quite in the dust. A key ingredient, however, is the basic willingness to go through the open door of opportunity, to leave the security of the old ground and get up in the air with Wilbur and Orville. There's no mindset quite so daunting as the fear of falling, after all, but for the adventurous few, not many things are as alluring as the chance to fly. <> In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there <> have always been times like these. -- Paul Harvey
Date: Sun 13-Sep-1991 16:12:00 From: reynolds@montana.portal.com Subject: Re: Mindsets (was Re: The need for speed) In article <1991Sep13.114927.18509@macc.wisc.edu> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes: > > Ah, these young people, full of vim and vigor, crushing the > competition. Jess, I gather from the above statement that you might be a little bit older than me. I have a hunch you might even have used punch cards at one time. I have two questions for you: 1. Is the NeXT a big or small step in the history of computing? 2. Is the resistance to the NeXT similar to resistance experienced by other computing devices in the past?
Date: Sun 14-Sep-1991 06:15:02 From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) Subject: Re: Mindsets In article <1991Sep13.161200.386@montana.portal.com> reynolds@montana.portal.com (Jack Reynolds) writes: >In article <1991Sep13.114927.18509@macc.wisc.edu> >anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes: >>Ah, these young people, full of vim and vigor, crushing the >>competition. Extracted from the context in which I wrote it, this now reads like I was sneering. Excuse me, if that's how anyone took it; that wasn't my intent. >Jess, I gather from the above statement that you might be a >little bit older than me. I have a hunch you might even >have used punch cards at one time. I have two questions for >you: Well, older. Paper tape, would you believe? :-) Urbana, Illiac I, 1955. 36 years ago next month. I was 20. Were you born yet? The questions you pose could each evoke a book-length reply. I guess that means they're good questions. The answers to both would include quite a bit of "it all depends." >1. Is the NeXT a big or small step in the history of > computing? It all depends. :-) There's big and there's big. Compared to the advent of the transistor or (ultra, very) large-scale intergration, it's not that big. Compared to batch- oriented, non-multi-processing computing, it's bigger. To waffle a bit, I would say that NeXT is more evolutionary than revolutionary, in the context of today's workstation- style desktop computing. But in 1955, what we took to be fairly heady and advanced stuff is by today's standard uncommonly crude. I would say five or six orders of magnitude in price/performance ratios is pretty big. That said, and related to your other question, I think NeXT is a fairly impressive incremental step in that evolution. I see this increment as focused primarily on the nature and scope of the uses people make of the NeXT system. >2. Is the resistance to the NeXT similar to resistance > experienced by other computing devices in the past? What resistance? :-) In another posting, you give quite a bit of detail about how NeXT fits into your present work life (work as battle, mostly :-). As a general comment, some people seem to resist everything new. I think it's undeniable that one gets more conservative as one gets older, even if you're determined not to let it happen to you. Decision-making power tends to be concentrated among people to whom this has already happened. By the way, it's not pro forma always a bad thing. Like so many things, it all depends, inter alia, on what your experience has prepared you for. To a person who, like me, proactively seeks the new and sees NeXT as an evolutionary step forward, this resistance is par for the course. A lot depends on the scope of your responsibilities and on your willingness to gamble. A big factor is imagination and creativity in how computing fits into your work life. Your other postings recently give some insights on these things. There's a kind of bootstrapping people tend to be won over, their resistance melts. But there's an inertia in the mind -- ego interests vested in being expert in your old context, say -- that causes some people to pause at the doorway to a better way, where better is obvious to the person who's already passed through. I'm not sure how responsive this is to the thrust of your questions. Discussions of topics like these necessarily involve a certain amount of hand-waving. <> Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the <> details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish <> one man from another. <> -- Ernest Hemingway, quoted in "Sunday Times," 1966
Date: Sun 14-Sep-1991 15:36:10 From: reynolds@montana.portal.com Subject: Re: Mindsets In article <1991Sep14.061502.15170@macc.wisc.edu> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes: > > Well, older. Paper tape, would you believe? :-) Urbana, > Illiac I, 1955. 36 years ago next month. I was 20. Were > you born yet? > No. I'm not even sure Steve Jobs was born by 1955.
Date: Sun 15-Sep-1991 19:24:25 From: jfr@locus.com (Jon Rosen) Subject: Re: Mindsets Jack Reynolds writes: > Jess Anderson writes: >> >> Well, older. Paper tape, would you believe? :-) Urbana, >> Illiac I, 1955. 36 years ago next month. I was 20. Were >> you born yet? >> >No. I'm not even sure Steve Jobs was born by 1955. In fact, I believe that is either the year he was born or the year after (I think he is now 37). PS - did paper tape come BEFORE cards or after? I used cards before I used paper tape since paper tape was more or less associated with teletype terminals which I did not start using until 1968. Cards, on the other hand, were used long before computers, with sorters, accounting machines (do you remember the 407??? :-) and other assorted mechanical devices. Jeez, I feel "old" :-) And I am not NEARLY as old as Jess :-) Jon Rosen
Date: Sun 15-Sep-1991 23:35:56 From: scott@gac.edu (Scott Hess) Subject: Re: Mindsets (was Re: The need for speed) <1991Sep13.014322.20634@montana.portal.com> <1991Sep13.114927.18509@macc.wisc.edu> In article <1991Sep13.114927.18509@macc.wisc.edu> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes: In article <1991Sep13.014322.20634@montana.portal.com> reynolds@montana.portal.com (Jack Reynolds) writes: >Let me give an example. I was at a dealer open house for NeXT >recently. I spent 30 minutes showing a Mac user how he could >double and triple his productivity by using a NeXT in a publishing >environment. He was amazed. Finally, after much consternation, >he concluded that he couldn't afford to switch to NeXT because he >would loose the $15,000 he had invested in his Mac fonts. To this >I replied, "I know what you mean. I don't want to go to heaven >because I'll have to leave my new car behind." Car, hell! -- I don't want to go to heaven because you have to die! :-) But it's a wonderful example of something that I think *is* important, relating back to being where the customer is (like it or not). $15,000 worth of fonts, when compared to $100,000 worth of new business or trebling your average productivity, is peanuts. What you're dealing with here, and I'd be surprised if nobody at NeXT is thinking about this, is attitudes. Some attitudes simply cannot be changed; people are the way they are, and those who've invested -- not so much money as ego -- in being a certain way are going to be hard nuts to sell on anything new. They're natural conservatives, more concerned about where they've been than about where they're headed. George Bush would not have been Orville Wright's first passenger, if he'd been at Kitty Hawk. This comes down to the psuedo-fact that there are two ways to make The first seems to require spending money (advertising and other propaganda, and R&D). Thus far, I'm sort of concerned, because NeXT often seems to lean towards the second group. That's bad, because if you're making money by saving money on what business you do, you do not increase your market share . . . Of course, looking from the customers PoV, a Mac emulator would be just the ticket to have your cake and eat it too. Then, they could get the NeXT to run the "two or three neat NeXT apps I want" and run their investment in Mac software, too. Of course, we all know that it would take about 2 months before it'd be "I have the Mac emulator on my NeXT to run two or three Mac programs that I have to have that I've not been able to find for the NeXT (yet)." :-) Later,
Date: Sun 16-Sep-1991 00:08:28 From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) Subject: Re: Mindsets In article <1991Sep15.192425.01039315@locus.com> jfr@locus.com (Jon Rosen) writes: >Jack Reynolds writes: >>Jess Anderson writes: >>>Paper tape, would you believe? :-) Urbana, >>>Illiac I, 1955. 36 years ago next month. I was 20. Were >>>you born yet? >>No. I'm not even sure Steve Jobs was born by 1955. >In fact, I believe that is either the year he was born or >the year after (I think he is now 37). When I was young, I knew the world was crazy because it was being run by old fogies. Now that I'm older than those fogies, I know the world is crazy because it's being run (at least the fun stuff is) by kids. But on our times, my guess is it's better to go with the wildness and intemperate judgments of the kids than with the overly cautious, timid indecision of our present leaders. Sorry, indulge me in these comments. >PS - did paper tape come BEFORE cards or after? I used >cards before I used paper tape since paper tape was more or >less associated with teletype terminals which I did not >start using until 1968. Cards, on the other hand, were used >long before computers, with sorters, accounting machines (do >you remember the 407??? :-) and other assorted mechanical >devices. I do indeed remember the 407. The oldest punched cards I know of were *also* a kind of paper tape, for they were fan-folded (cloth hinges) cards about the size of a letter sheet that controlled the complex patterns of the Jacquard loom. I'm not much on the history of technology, but I'm pretty sure this was the 17th or 18th century. The paper tape of Teletype fame was what we used in the 50s for input and output. The reader could handle 300 characters a second, a phenomenal speed. The punch was more stately (I seem to remember 60 char/sec). This tape we took to a *fast* teletype (11 char/sec) to make our printouts. There was no compiler. You coded in a decimal notation to actual (rather than symbolic) memory addresses. The machine was big: 1024 memory cells of 40-bit words (2 instructions/ word). It was fast: all arithmetic was fixed-point, and an add instruction was 13 milliseconds. It had a lot of vacuum tubes -- a *lot* of them -- and was cooled by a 100-ton air conditioner (this air was not circulated in the room, by the way; the lab was as stifling as mid-summer Urbana can muster). You can buy more computer than that for under $20 these days, and run it on the glow of a lightbulb. Now, we must relate all this to the subject of our newsgroup. That I'll do by pointing out that the difference between a NeXT and a Macintosh (or an Amiga or PC, if you like) is *considerably* less impressive than the difference between a Mac and that old Illiac. To be impressed by a NeXT merely means you haven't lived very long yet. But if you tried to get either of my cubes away from me, these old bones could still rise up in righteous fury, I'm sure! >Jeez, I feel "old" :-) And I am not NEARLY as old as Jess :-) You best be careful, laddie, or you might not *get* to be that old! :-) <> The death of democracy is not likely to be an <> assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction <> from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. <> -- Robert Hutchins, "Great Books" 1954
Date: Sun 15-Sep-1991 23:46:23 From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) Subject: Re: Mindsets (was Re: The need for speed) In article <1991Sep13.114927.18509@macc.wisc.edu> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes: >Some attitudes simply cannot be changed; people are the way >they are, and those who've invested -- not so much money as >ego -- in being a certain way are going to be hard nuts to >sell on anything new. They're natural conservatives, more >concerned about where they've been than about where they're >headed. George Bush would not have been Orville Wright's >first passenger, if he'd been at Kitty Hawk. This analogy is interesting for several reasons. First, and most trite, Bush is a pilot. More interesting though is that the Wrights ended up losing the aviation market to others. They stubbornly clung to their own ideas, refused to listen to what the customers wanted, and eventually their competition overwhelmed them. They fought lengthy patent litigation that was not resolved until long after the real battle was lost. Ultimately, Glenn Curtis contributed more to flight in the US in the early years than the Wrights; in the 1920's Tony Fokker (whose innovative aircraft almost won WWI for Germany) came to the US and continued to revolutionize aircraft design. -+-+- | -++- --|-- /__ Mark ("Gaijin") Crispin "Gaijin! Gaijin!" +-|-|-+ -+-++++ +-|-+ / / R90/6 pilot; DoD #0105 "Chigau. Omae ha gaijin." +-+-+-+ |\|||| |===| / / Atheist & Proud "Iie, boku ha nihonjin." --|-- /| |/\| -+===+- /\ (206) 842-2385/543-5762 "Souka. Yappari gaijin!" /|\ | |__| / \ / \ FAX: (206) 543-3909 Hee, dakedo UNIX nanka wo tsukatte, umaku ikanakute mo shiranai yo.
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