Social and Economic Technology - 5.4. Social Impacts from a Sociological Point of View.

A new Relationship between the Computer, the User, and the Software.

Secotek concentrates on a practical System to enable the Rural People in rural areas to get to grips and make effective use of computers to make a significant impact on their lifestyle, as proposed throughout this document. The discussion will now concentrate on the "IBM PC" hardware. This is because the author is most familiar with this hardware, and there is much more of this hardware available at low cost than any other. However, it should be noted that the whole project should be developed in the spirit of a General Public Licence, as defined by the Open Software Foundation. A natural progression from this would be to expand the system to cover alternative platforms.

Secotek may propose that default expectation, usage and presentation of computers should be somewhat more standardized than at present, but nevertheless underlaying this is the anticipation that individuals deep in the rural countryside should making good usage of not particularly up to date or standardized hardware, without extensive usage of expensive technical support. This state of affairs is perfectly achievable, if the problem is recognized for what it is and tackled properly from the outset.

Taking the automobile as an analogy, when they first appeared, the users had to be more of an enthusiastic mechanic than a driver. After that, there was a significant period where people bought vehicles to drive, and garages provided major mechanical support. Nevertheless, most drivers were skilled enough to know when and how to change spark plugs, change tyres, tighten belts etc. etc., and know when a problem was beyond them. If an individual could not achieve this, they invariably knew a friend or relative that could. After that, to even drive the vehicles became a "skillful" thing to do, requiring training and examination. Nevertheless, "Joe public" did not turn out to be too stupid to tackle this problem head on. Nobody pretended that cars would drive themselves to their destination, and that the user was inherently too ignorant or stupid to interfere with this process. Garage mechanics never developed between themselves languages deliberately designed to make the user feel inadequate and left outside the process of car maintenance. This, however, is what has happened in the computer situation, purely because to do this is in the interests of licence revenue and increasing sales of latest hardware. The fact that computers have never been able to, and still cannot, "drive themselves to their destination" is plain to see. So long as there is a monopoly of one company whose commercial ambitions are no secret, (Microsoft), epic quantities of computing power lies idle, whilst rural communities, shunned from the Information Highway, both economically and socially fall apart.

What is required is that there be a public database of all the pieces of hardware supported by the project, down to "peripheral card" "motherboard" level. How to identify pieces of hardware should be available from the data base. Then, if a computer is made up from a particular combination of hardware, the database will identify shortcomings compared to the expectations implied in this document, and what to do about it. Once suitable hardware is assembled, the database will provide software to enable the hardware to perform in an anticipated way. The size of the public database to cover all suitable hardware ever manufactured is only that of a powerful server PC. To use the database successfully to cheaply acquire low cost adequate computing systems will obviously require some skill on the part of the user. However, if presented properly and in a standardized way, the skills required will be no more than changing the spark plugs in a car, quite within the capability of "Joe public" who picks up the know how from a friend, through the education system, or simply relies upon a friend or relative who can do it.

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