Salford Business School
Key Issues in Information System Development
Locked in Technologies in Information Systems Development
My learning experience on the module “Key Issues in Information Systems Development””
Albert Poghosyan
(a.poghosyan@pgt.salford.ac.uk)
Course: MSc eGovernance Lecturer: Frances Wilson (f.wilson@salford.ac.uk)
December 2006
Albert Poghosyan
03/01/2007
Content
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 3 1. The fable (myth) of the keys .............................................................................................. 3 2. Rationalism in the age of chaos......................................................................................... 4 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 5 References ............................................................................................................................. 7
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Albert Poghosyan
03/01/2007
Introduction
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. William Blake
Introduction to any work is similar to preparation for diving on big submarine. This introduction will allow the reader to make his time to prepare for difficult diving into the world of technologies and human rationalism. So, please, prepare every single thought and all ideas that you have about these subjects, as the journey into deep ocean of Technology and the Information Systems will bring you immediately to complete denial of reality and will probably change some of your thoughts. While learning on the module, I have understood that lots of issues raised here will never be examined from alternative viewpoint, if we do not try to look from another side. A little bit deep into problems and construction of the problems, but mainly into faulty of the systems. Of course no system is perfect, but there are ones that do not develop any more similar as technologies that should develop systems. They are stuck for so many years that nobody believes that this kind of systems could be moved forward. So this is why it is very important to determine this kind of systems and to develop them. This complicated connection between locked in technologies and organizational systems which work on these technologies handled as target in this work. This makes me to do a quite rational act of changing the title of this assignment dramatically into “Locked in Technologies in Systems Development”. And this obviously easy step was done by me as far as I followed my thoughts deep into Information Systems development issues and causes. Looking in to the essence of issues raised at the module we will find many similarities and the most important similarity is one important word, from which everything starts – “Standardization”. For any scientist this word is truly the symbol of technological development, the hope of humanization of any invention and of course the symbol of success. But also from another point of view this word is a symbol of getting stuck, the failure of development. As far as any researcher is exited by this word they forget that this can bring to deadlock and not only in their own researches but also in the whole research area. This very important fact has not been examined at all and it still remains undiscovered for many cases that are obviously locked in technological developments.
1. The fable (myth) of the keys
Speaking about locked in technologies we can’t pass the most known and most disputable example: the QWERTY keyboard layout discovered by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873, when it first appeared in typewriters. (Wikipedia, 2006) Sholes was developing the new type of typewriters and the myth goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY keyboard design aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed. To avoid this, Sholes developed the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, and solves the problem of slow typewriters. (www.independent.org, 1999) A different layout, which had been patented by August Dvorak in 1936, was shown to be much faster. Yet the Dvorak layout has never been widely adopted, even though the anti-jamming rationale for QWERTY has been defunct for years. The myth of QWERTY became the iconic for economists as the market failure. (Wikipedia, 2006) Meanwhile, Mr. Liebowitz and Margolis developed an interesting analyse and concluded it in their article “The Fable of the keys”. It said that this case was the perfect example of “locked in technologies”. Of course, the aim of their article was to reject the myth that the 3
Albert Poghosyan 03/01/2007 QWERT keyboard was the failure of the market, but trying to reject this fact they discovered much more interesting one. (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1990) So let’s look at the history of the case. As far as Sholes discovered QWERTY for helping typewriters not to stuck typewriting machines, the standard of keyboards was set. He made a very rational keyboard for his time, which fully satisfied the demand of development and technological level. A watershed event in the received version of the QWERTY story is a typing contest held in Cincinnati on July 25, 1888. Frank McGurrin, a court stenographer from Salt Lake City, who was apparently the first to memorize the keyboard and use touch-typing. Mr. McGurrin entered into the contest with other participants and typewriting methods and won. He proved everyone that that particular keyboard was enough fast and efficient for those times. (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1990) But in 1936 when August Dvorak was developing this new keyboard layout, the demand was different. The QWERTY layout which was developed to slow down the typewriting now became less useful as the technology of typewriting machines has been developed forward. And new technology should come to change the old one, but this does not happen. Instead, development of technology took a wrong path developing much more complicated layouts such as USA International layout for Windows and Macintosh systems. The most important conclusion of Liebowitz and Margolis was that the trap constituted by an obsolete standard may be quite fragile, because real-world situations present opportunities for some people to profit from changing to a superior standard. They have made a very interesting research not only with its historical part, but general functioning of the whole system. They describe a market system and an environment where consumers face a new technology and deal with it. In many cases there are lots of accidents. And there is an easy chance for the society to make a wrong selection of a technology. Even if consumers are perfectly rational, in case if there is one technology – they can accept it or not, or rather in case if there are two or more offered technologies they can be selected. But they are attributed no ability to anticipate the existence of some future, better standards. (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1990) And in flash the society has to commit resources to select the standard which will replace all existed ones before. The most interesting fact is that the selection will be given to the standard that satisfies the permanent, at-the-time demand. This clearly presents some sort of “destiny” of technology, which develops by economic and political situation more than by market or consumer demand. The system selects its attributes - not the people who think that they are in control.
2. Rationalism in the age of chaos
The example of locked in technology of keyboard layout reveals an interesting fact – humans adapt themselves to the existing technology and system, instead of adopting system for their needs. This is highly interesting. While we develop something which is modern and new, we are keeping it and trying to standardize it more and more and as far as we succeed, we try to forget about systems gaining more power in the course of time. The human adaptation is paradoxical and inexplicably. This adaptation to the first offered standard can be found in many cases, but first let’s look at rational part. To be honest, we need to state the very important factor of human nature: human being is a creator. Trying hard throughout the history of modern civilization human was developing himself and his environment hoping to create perfect system with perfect living conditions. This aspiration of human nature distinguishes him from all other creatures of Earth, and meanwhile rationally explains any step of men on the earth. And from that point of view all what he does is “rational”, as he was hurrying to reach a prefect system. Trying to understand the meaning of rationalism I have tried the Wikipedia’s definition: “any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification” (Wikipedia, 2006); any view, a form, method explaining firstly why and then how or when or anything else. The program (method) which makes any complicated mechanism easy even for a child to understand. But let’s find a different angle. While we speak 4
Albert Poghosyan 03/01/2007 about researches in any field of natural science rationalism works perfect. As far as we start to speak about humans, this method does not work that good, because human beings are irrational. My personal attitude towards the issue is that any system created on the bases of rationalism will fall sooner or later; thus system born, evolved, rebuild will eventually die. In this chaos human even get matured to understand all movements and predict or forecast any changes. Looking into the theory of chaos world - humans get used to conduct the systems. (Pascale, 2001) But there is always a big question: “who conducts whom?” And it looks like the famous citation from Barry Levinson’s film: “Why dog wags the tail? Because dog is smarter than the tail. But if the tail is smarter than dog, who wags than in reality?” (Levinson, 1997) To think rationally, if human creates the system, so he is the only one in control. But while the human creates the system, the system itself creates mechanism of protection and, for sure, the first attribute the system should be protected from is the human: the creator. Rational systems get developed; they learn and gain any knowledge which has been invested in them and they redevelop newly – developing by themselves. We come to a curious conclusion that systems develop the standards. Trying to standardize any part of a mechanism, big and complicated system should always think about fusion. These standards turned into real totems of the systems, like the idols of systems’ “faith”. And as the systems develop they remain to be based on the same standards. Due to this phenomenon most of the systems got locked in technologies for development. Probably the best example of modern locked in technologies is our political system and the democracy dictated to people by parties and other political organizations. Democracy or the first form of it – the Direct Democracy was developed in ancient Greece and even in his times has been refute by Plato. This ancient technology of governance lost its rational sense many centuries ago but even now the whole political systems of the world suffer from this. It has been developed in context of strong parties to move forward from monarchy and even after development of Liberal Democracy it did not change its sense at all. Even there are lots of alternatives, but this technology keeps one's feet by the systems and in the name of the system. Till now nobody can refute it, meanwhile it is the best example of locked in technology. This is not the only example. Lots of examples could be sharply defined by simple observation of any system but still this kind of analyses goes not to the direct problems but to the feet of it, which, of course, does not give any solution. But understanding of the phenomenon is much more important than any possible solution offered on locked in technology. The comparison between Locked in technology of Keyboard Layout and Democracy, which is offered to reader in this work, is highly important for deep understanding not the locked in technology phenomenon by itself but the system as a whole.
Conclusion
Any education offered in the world’s best universities supposes rational analysis of all disciplines and theories ever discovered by human. None of these disciplines or theories are rated as the best or most important. But when we look deep into systems – it seems that the nature and mechanisms of any system created by human is adopted by science as a fact. In realty only the argument that the system works can not prove that the system is working in a right way. And if we speak about social systems, there are lots of emotions, which are directly connected with this mistake of perception. And “So far, so good. So far, so good” as the guy who was falling from fiftieth floors keeps repeating. But it’s not the fall that matters, it’s the landing. (Kassovitz, 1995) Why we should look on content of all systems in prospective to forget that this systems have been inspired and created by people. People like us - but not better than us. They think, they analyse but even "if" they are smart, they will not create the system which could have the 5
Albert Poghosyan 03/01/2007 function of self-control. It is just impossible. System can control any of us, but anyone who thinks that he controls the systems is in deep negligent ignorance. This is the only truth that we can conclude while we are researching any social system. This is only truth that I can reference while I am doing logical analyse. If one succeeds it does not prove that he is right. This truth of market can not be implemented in philosophy system development. And this is the point where we should have look at it. Deep in our harts we think that we are honest and fair people, but only external viewer can tell us who we are in reality. I don't think that any external viewer has been born on this planet since its creature. We are deeply involved in it. From one hand it is very good for our analyses, but on the other hand, we can be honest totally. We are trying to live, but we just survive. We will never make a perfect system, and some of us know this. Any system created by us will fail or will try to control us. And this thought makes me feel very frightened. Nothing else in this world can make me frightened as the system does. I am trying to fright other things or even fright people, but I can't, because I know them. What I don't know, I don’t know what to expect from rational structured system created by irrational people. This is the end of my logic. This is the end of everything. In near future neither terrorist nor even aliens will threat a mortal danger to our planet, but the systems created by us; systems created by well dressed people, who are maybe learning right now, on this course, maybe on this module and even possibly by me…
Albert Poghosyan Comments: albert@poghosyan.com Information: www.albertpoghosyan.com
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Albert Poghosyan
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References
KASSOVITZ, M. (1995) La Haine. France, Studio Canal. LEVINSON, B. (1997) Wag the Dog. New Line Home Video. LIEBOWITZ, S. J. & MARGOLIS, S. E. (1990) The Fable of the Keys. 33, 1-25. PASCALE, R. T. (2001) Surfing the edge of chaos, Texere Publishing Ltd. WIKIPEDIA (2006) Rationalism - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism. WWW.INDEPENDENT.ORG (1999) The QWERTY Myth. The Economist. The Independent Institute.
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