Activation Theme / Windowlicker

Windows 3.1, Microsoft Corp. 1992

Tomorrow it's two entire decades since Windows 3.11 was released. The anniversary of a service pack for Windows 3.1 is a poor excuse to launch into this post, I know. You'll have to forgive the nostalgia - my first computer was an IBM PS/2 running 3.1. A technician had to be called out several times at expense to reinstall Windows as a result of my exploring the system. That computer is long gone after being replaced with a new Aptiva in 1998 - itself twice succeeded. Something about the old system still lingers fondly in my memory. I recall the last times I used that old operating system.


Thirteen years ago when I moved into this house the residents had left their PS/2 behind - they didn't even bother to wipe the drive, though there wasn't anything confidential besides some bitmap drawings. We didn't hold onto it for long, though I enjoyed being able to mess around with it knowing it didn't matter if I broke it. The final time I encountered W3.1 was in fact at IBM in 2002 on work experience. In the corner of a server room was a little machine that was wired up to the overhead displays in the call centre. My supervisor and I did a spot of rewiring and troubleshooting. Oddly enough, IBM was also still using OS/2 (which I had never seen in the wild) at that time alongside Windows 2000 on separate machines linked with KVM switches.

I'll tell you just how much 3.1 effected me. It's embarrassing, but I actually wrote a book report on the system manual in Primary 6 (around 1997). That built on the previous year when I wrote in a diary of what I did at the weekend, or something along those lines, that I had uncovered Sound Recorder. Though I lacked a microphone, the green line of the virtual oscilloscope picking up a small amount of electrical noise captivated me. I still have that six hundred paged tome of a manual in my bookshelf. It could be worth something beyond personal value, but it's really just the last survivor of material goods I remember from the early 90s that hasn't been thrown out by my parents. It's a long way off making up for the disposal of all my Ghostbusters stuff.

Enough reminiscing. Let's talk about the Graphical User Interface in general. I can faintly remember booting the computer and having to type 'win' into the command line to start Windows, and I regularly had to exit Windows to get into DOS proper to run certain games. So it was bewildering to me why so many classmates in high school IT (no later than 2001) were mentally adrift when the teacher demonstrated the Command Line Interface of DOS. These days, with the decrease in technical competence required to operate a computer to the point everyone (but me, of course) has one in their pocket (but still name it after Bell's invention), it likely never occurs to anyone that their method of interaction with the device is a metaphor.

I'll give Microsoft® their dues. The metaphor of the desktop was antiquated and certainly ill-suited for particular devices - ie, phones. I've only used Windows 8 once and it infuriated me. As the unpaid IT technician of the house I had to attend to a problem with my dad's laptop (touch-screen OS and trackball being the work of the devil). I knew exactly what to do to fix it, but I had no idea how to locate the control panel. There was no start menu, and no true desktop to speak of. By redesigning the system I had to learn to navigate the system all over again - and Windows 8 departs with existing ideas about interaction that are older than I am. That is a hindrance to achieving your task, yet at the same time the metaphors we're used to can be just as bad.

The desktop environment is the most prominent skeuomorph in personal computing. It draws on the experience of real-world organisation - files, folders, cabinets, volumes, a desk. However, it completely falls apart with some very basic actions. For example, to read a document you go to the filing cabinet and find the appropriate folder and remove the file to read it. There is one file and you are reading it. Compare with the electronic equivalent. I select the appropriate drive volume, find the My Documents folder and open the file. And open the file. And open the file again. And again and again until the system runs out of memory (which will take a long time these days). Question: which is the original file? Like the matrix, these systems are built on real world rules but it is not the real world. A lot of what makes the electronic computer so powerful has no equivalent in the real world. Hyperlinking and embedded media have approximations in citations and inset illustrations, though the ability to flawlessly copy infinitely is clearly the cornerstone of the digital medium. In this case, the real world is struggling to contain it and adapt - why else has copyright become such a contested issue since 1999? Copying is no longer the laborious and expensive task it was in the days of the Xerox machine.

Ornamental affectations ease novices in, but hinder experts. You see these images of obsolete technology retained as visual metaphors for actions all around. For years I clicked on the 'return to desktop' icon in the taskbar but I never knew what it actually depicted. Apparently it was a leather-bound desk blotter. I don't even know what that is. I know what a floppy disk is, and it's commonly understood to indicate the save function, though I can't imagine too many people could recall the last time they saw one. Children in IT classes now have probably never seen one. Instead of navigating the hall of mirrors reflecting dead tech, we could be reaching instantaneously into the desired action. I'll admit to being reticent to abandon the directory structure even if the dump-it-anywhere-and-use-search method does dispense with expanding and collapsing folder trees. However, that relies on properly tagging everything and naming the files which takes longer than dropping a randomly-named file into a categorised folder.

I have a real world example of pointless affectation. There's a gas fire in the living room and in order to evoke the past, or some other such marketing inanity, it has fake coals. You'd think the coals are bound together and immobile - perhaps carved from a block of fire-resistant material that rolled off a production line. Not so, as last winter the living room fire was on and one of these fakes coals tumbled out and set fire to a patch of the carpet. It's only a matter of time until the insurance industry bans skeuomophs. Maybe I'm just a utilitarian.

¶[1146 ; 1.5]