I happened to be at a hospital Friday morning and talked to the nurses about the effects of the CrowdStrike outage on them. Some time after midnight computers crashed. They had contingency plans to use paper records and started laboriously writing reports. Within in an hour or two, IT had restored a few computers and by sun up, everything was working. This is secondhand information and may not be entirely accurate, but I think it’s a fair statement that event was an annoyance, but not a catastrophe.
That seems to be what happened all over.
During the runup to Y2K twenty-five years ago, I was on the frontlines, testing and patching systems. On December 31, 1999, the company I was working for, Computer Associates, offered emergency technical help to all of its customers. HR and facilities brought in catered sandwiches and pizza and it was almost a party. We had a closed circuit TV connection to the company Y2K Emergency Center in New York and the team was poised to jump in when needed.
Some outfit in Australia had a minor problem early in the day that was quickly fixed. The PR department snapped staged photos of code geniuses clustered around terminals. That was about all the excitement.
Our dev team swarmed the catering tables and did their own work all day and into the night, not wanting to forgo promised bonus pay. After six, HR quit shooing away the sales people from the food. Our Y2K event was longer than most corporate parties, but completely as dull.
In other words, the day was a total “meh.”
I wrote a Substack post on CrowdStrike Friday explaining why I was not surprised that the crashes didn’t last for long, although I also think steps could be taken to prevent similar events in the future.
This post is about writing and computing. It only touches on the technical, so I’ve posted it here on Vine Maple Farm, rather than Marv Waschke on Computing, which I reserve for more technical subjects.
I have found AlphaSmart mode to be productive and relaxing, which is a nice addition to anyone’s work repertoire.
What’s old is new again.
I’m typing this on an AlphaSmart 3000, a product designed and built for use in elementary and high school classrooms for keyboard training, a $300 alternative to desktop and laptop computers costing thousands. It’s LED display has only four lines, each forty characters long, about the equivalent of two lines of text on a letter-size page.
Largely replaced by Chromebooks, school systems were surplusing them before pandemic began and the lockdowns and school closures accelerated the trend. Lacking online functionality, AlphaSmarts are useless for remote learning, and they now flood Ebay.
I’ve heard about distraction-free writing devices for at least a decade. Curious but not much attracted because I’ve never had much patience with folks who find the ocean of knowledge on the global computer network a distraction rather than a resource.
Lured by low prices and curiosity, I bought an AlphaSmart 3000 on Ebay about a month ago for less than fifty bucks and I am astounded to say that I love it.
Although I am 74 years old, I’m also a digital native. I wrote my first computer program in 1967 and started using screens in the 1980s. My solution for the last decade has been two displays, one for the job at hand, the other for fact-checking and online reference tools. I’m sticking with that configuration, but the AlphaSmart has added something new.
If you want to edit beyond the simplest changes, forget it.
I used to scribble rough outlines on a pad of paper (the backside of single-sided print docs). I still do. But now, I sprawl in a recliner with the AlphaSmart and my paper notes and type away.
The AlphaSmart is a drafting, not an editing device. Navigating text on an AlphaSmart is difficult. You are stuck with single-space arrows, “home,” “end” and “backspace” keys and that’s it. If you want to edit beyond the simplest changes, forget it. You have to upload to a real computer.
The AlphaSmart is for laying down one sentence after another. Leave the moves, cuts, and tweaks for later. If you can’t correct it easily on the four line display, leave it for later. If you can’t remember something, stick in TK (a signal to an editor that more is To Kome) and move on. For me, this provides two advantages. I can leave my office to give my aching neck, back, and butt a break, and it sets me free for a mode of thinking and composing that I have only experienced previously while writing in longhand, which is followed by transcription to text, which I dislike. I have found AlphaSmart mode to be productive and relaxing, which is a nice addition to anyone’s work repertoire.
Now, I’ll get down to technology. The virtues of the AlphaSmart come from what it isn’t rather than what it is. It’s a keyboard with a simple display and a small memory, probably less than a megabyte. When disconnected from a computer, the user types text, which appears in the display, into memory. Although the device has a processor, it acts only as a simple controller. When an AlphaSmart communicates with a computer, it uses a simple keyboard protocol rather than a file transfer protocol. The user opens a text entry tool, like a text editor or word processor, positions the cursor, and presses “Send” on the AlphaSmart. The computer screen acts as if a fast typist is typing in text.
That’s all the device does.
Because the AlphaSmart is so simple, three AA batteries seem to last forever. It does not heat up and there is no humming fan. It has no moving parts other than the keys and starts in less time than it takes me to remember where I left off. The device was designed to endure rough elementary school students. I’ve already dropped my used AlphaSmart without damage. It’s clearly not new, but it doesn’t look shabby either.
I enjoy a good rampage now and then.
The AlphaSmart is not perfect. The keyboard is the equivalent of a quality laptop keyboard, but it does not have the key throw and satisfying feel of a mechanical keyboard. The space bar has to be struck squarely. The LED screen has no backlight, which adds to battery life, but is inconvenient for adding a sentence or two during the ads while watching TV in dim light.
This morning, I went on a rampage, practically tearing the living room and my office apart because I couldn’t find my AlphaSmart. I had forgotten that I tucked it behind a chair cushion. I don’t usually get attached to gadgets. This is not normal behavior for me. Well, not everyday behavior. I enjoy a good rampage now and then.
A final note: I favor the AlphaSmart 3000. I also have a 2000. It’s keyboard interface doesn’t work with Windows 10 without a somewhat hard to find special adapter, which is a pain. Later models, like the AlphaSmart Neo, are Palm PDAs in an AlphaSmart form factor and, in my opinion, a step beyond the 3000’s charming simplicity.
The pace of the adoption of generative AI (ChatGPT is one implementation of genAI) continues to be extraordinarily rapid. If anything, genAI’s adoption and fears of the consequences of its adoption are accelerating, which is as interesting to me as the technology itself and a determinant in its perceived threats.
Our fears over genAI are nothing new. Most existed long before the neighbor’s cat caught its first rat.
Last week, technology executives gathered at the Capitol to discuss regulating genAI with lawmakers. Mark me down as a skeptic: on the technology executive side, the participants were jockeying for advantage in exploiting the technology. They would have passed if they weren’t slathering to exploit genAI. They argued for restraining their competitors. But themselves? Oh no.
The lawmakers were striking poses against the evil tech execs and trying to establish genAI creds with their constituents. Little was accomplished, although, predictably, everyone promised to continue the discussion. At least while the cameras roll and the press clamors for coverage.
If the lawmakers are serious, which they very well should be, I suggest they call in genAI engineers, scientists, and academics. The discussion would take more effort to understand and generate fewer sound bites. The proceedings would look more like a classroom than a carnival. Far less idle entertainment, but not a complete waste of the time and resources.
Our fears over genAI are nothing new. Most existed long before the neighbor’s cat caught its first rat.
We fear AI will develop an unstoppable super virus that will kill off humankind. Moses used that threat to goad Pharoah into listening to the brickmakers local. But what stopped the Covid-19 pandemic? Vaccines, not tracking down the origin of the virus.
What if cheating with AI vitiates education? Cheating didn’t start with ChatGPT, nor will it end if genAI disappears. Students who know the value of learning, not the illusory advantages of arbitrary ticket punches, don’t cheat. Convince students that they will be rewarded in life for what they learn, not the grades they receive, and cheating will be gone.
Which brings us to the biggest fear of all: loss of jobs.
The disappearance of typing pools shows how genAI will change the job market, although crystal ball weather is always cloudy.
Desktop computers and copy machines obliterated typing and stenographic pools starting in the 1970s. Eliminating those pools transformed the nature of office work, and the role of women in the workplace changed dramatically. Women in the office today are far more numerous and significant than they were in the 40s, 50s, and 60s when most were typists, stenographers, and secretaries.
Did the replacement of typing and stenography with copy machines and desktop computers drag women kicking and screaming to become technicians, managers, and executives? Or did the desire of women for greater agency inspire machines that replaced typists and stenographers? You may prefer chickens or eggs but we’re still talking poultry. The workplace of Mad Men is gone.
The disappearance of typing pools shows how genAI will change the job market, although crystal ball weather is always cloudy.
Some kinds of desk work will change radically. The ubiquity of computer network based communications (the internet and the world wide web) has flooded us with words. Has the inundation improved or degraded written discourse? Opinions differ. There’s good writing on the internet, bad writing, and, predictably, a ton of mediocre writing, good enough to convey its intended message, but not of much merit in itself.
Starting in about 2000, some people have made a living producing mediocre network content. They write coherent and passable paragraphs about any subject, not unlike typists and stenographers who transformed anything dictated to them into words on paper. Some of these folks are being replaced by ChatGPT. Since using tools like ChatGPT is cheap and easy, more will be replaced.
GenAI has flaws. It makes things up (the current term is “hallucinates”) unpredictably. Its output is often boring and lifeless, sometimes nonsense. GenAI recipes range in quality from average to inedible. You can bet that developers are working nights and weekends to address these and other genAI issues.
In the 1980s, word processors froze periodically. It’s rare now, but they still do. Bugs still crawl through their algorithms, but only a tiny fraction compared to early times. I put in a few nights and weekends myself killing word processor bugs. They still aren’t perfect, but the easiest place to find a typewriter now is a museum, not an office.
In the 1960s and 70s, most women quit calling typing a career. They were no longer only trained fingers that operated a machine for putting words on paper in conventionally accepted spelling.
What will those who lose their jobs to genAI do and how will work change with genAI? I predict more jobs and more words. Some will move on to jobs they prefer like dog walking or nuclear physics, others will muddle on doing whatever comes next, but the flood of words will not abate.
Perhaps, faced with competition from mediocre genAI, the general quality of internet writing will improve. Yeah. Right.
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