Re: Why are you using Word, what got you started? (RE: What Are the Main Problems You Have with MS Word?)

["Bill Hall" <bill -dot- hall -at- hotkey -dot- net -dot- au>]

Sean Brierley is naughty... he keeps stirring the coals of holy war flames!

However, given that this is one of the topics of the "Application Holy Wars"
book I am writing, I'll have to buy in.

The technical term to answer to Sean's question is "network externality"
which was given some prominence in the Microsoft antitrust lawsuits. See
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22network+externality%22. See especially
http://raven.stern.nyu.edu/networks/ms/top.html for some good discussions of
the concept.

I discovered personal computing and WordStar 3.* in a CP/M (and concurrent
CP/M) environment in 1980, and between 1984 and 1987 was sole author and
documentation manager to produce complete and detailed documentation
packages for a large collection of multi-user/networked business
applications, including import/export, warehousing, GL, foreign exchange,
clinical practice management (medical/dental/veterinary versions), yacht
club, and stockbroking - all running in master/dumb terminal environments
with a maximum of 386 K (not M) memory on Z80 (8 bit) chips. Also, as a
writer I have never been more productive than when WordStar was my platform.
R.J. Sawyer explained why this was so in 1990 -
http://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm.

Despite the fact that our software was demonstrably superior to anything
else on the micro/personal computer market at the time, we went broke
because we weren't gooey and didn't run on DOS - which still didn't support
concurrent processing.

I did not willingly switch to WordPerfect, which was a pig compared to
WordStar, and even less willingly to MS Word's gooey Windows, which was a
warthog compared to WordPerfect.

An edited extract from my draft explains why the switches were unavoidable:

Xerox PARC's Alto and Star systems and Apple's Lisa and McIntosh systems
established bit–mapped graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Microsoft
introduced early versions of the Windows GUI to the PC market in 1985, which
achieved a comparatively small market share compared to DOS because there
were few applications using Windows. The release of Windows was followed by
the Windows GUI version of Word in 1989 and then by Excel and PowerPoint.
Led by MS Word, the now synergistic Windows packages achieved dominance in
their respective application areas around 1992. Because Microsoft's "killer"
applications all used a similar paper paradigm, they achieved essentially
total market dominance over products that were arguably technically superior
(and had been dominant in the past) but lagged in providing the paper–based
GUI. (And, of course, Microsoft did not make it easy for its competitors to
use the Window's operating environment.)

[I will also add here that the GUI contributes nothing to text or number
based communication except monumentally increased complexity and
computational load - it just looks nice to fools who think computers are a
new kind of typewriter that makes their paper documents look like they were
printed. Since I also studied printing when typesetting was a proper trade,
I can also say it allowed the corporate typists to be even bigger fools by
produce a lot of cr*ppily formatted pages.]

The other factor which helped Microsoft achieve and maintain its almost
total market monopoly over other WYSIWYG/Windows–based desk top publishing
and word processing applications is what Liebowitz and Margolis (1999),
Evans and Leder (1999) and Evans et al. (1999) call the "network effect" or
"network externality". Liebowitz and Margolis (1998) define the concept as
follows:

"Network externality has been defined as a change in the benefit, or
surplus, that an agent derives from a good when the number of other agents
consuming the same kind of good changes. As fax machines increase in
popularity, for example, your fax machine becomes increasingly valuable
since you will have greater use for it. This allows, in principle, the value
received by consumers to be separated into two distinct parts. One
component, which in our writings we have labelled the autarky value, is the
value generated by the product even if there are no other users. The second
component, which we have called synchronization value, is the additional
value derived from being able to interact with other users of the product,
and it is this latter value that is the essence of network effects."

The works cited above claim that despite the network effect, a "better"
technology can readily displace an entrenched product. From my understanding
of document paradigms and personal experience with their power in
influencing software purchases in organisations I have worked for, I would
argue the opposite.

Word processing applications are tools people and organisations use for
communicating with other people and organisations. Spreadsheets and database
applications also have important communication functions, but they are
primarily personal productivity tools used for individual purposes within
organisations. On the other hand, while the majority of organisations were
still using paper as their primary medium for exchanging information, it
made little difference which word processor was used to produce the paper –
everyone could still read the paper. A number of competitors could survive
in such a market.

However, once the electronic format itself became the primary medium for
communication, the network effect virtually assured a monopoly for the
leading product used for that communication.

Although today’s word processors and spreadsheets still firmly use a paper
document paradigm for their tangible output, virtually all organisations and
many individuals now distribute and access documents produced by these
applications electronically for on–screen viewing rather than by physical
paper.

To achieve the formatting result required by the paper paradigm, complex
proprietary formatting codes are included within the electronic documents to
ensure that the recipient's screen displays the document in as close to a
paper format as possible. Despite efforts(?) of software developers to
develop software able to convert content between one proprietary formatting
code and another, the effective transfer/translation of electronic documents
between different applications is fraught with difficulty. Assuming that it
is even possible to translate the document at all, it is practically
impossible to edit documents produced in one brand of word processor in
another brand of word procssor.

If you communicate by exchanging wordprocessed files electronically, you are
forced to use formats your partners, clients and suppliers can understand.
As soon as a key player adopts a particular format, those that communicate
with the key player need to follow suit. When Australia's Defence
Acquisition Organisation decided to adopt Word as their standard for bid
documents, Tenix and other Defence suppliers had no choice but to follow. As
prime contractors fell into line, the smaller suppliers also had to follow.
Because a few more big organisations settled on Word than any other package,
the network ensured that Word (and its associated products) would rapidly
achieve total dominance.

Because Digital Research's CEO was more interested in flying than being in
the office to meet IBM, and his wife wouldn't take the responsibility to
sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement, we ended up with Billy's CP/M ripoff,
DOS; and because Xerox didn't know how to count clicks, we ended up with
Billy's ripoff of the PARC GUI inventions. And because of the network
externality effect combined with the need for a common communication format,
we are stuck with Billy's ripoffs until we adopt a truly non-proprietary
semantic standard for document exchange (e.g., XML).

Bill Hall
-------------------------------------------------------------------
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
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-
TS Eliot - The Rock



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