zlacker

I find it interesting how Dunlop was trying to solve the same kinds of problems Engelbart was, with the added constraint of preserving the shifgrethor of the top IBM executives. The fact that late-20th-century businessmen viewed such things as typing to be subordinates' work has had a more profound effect on the adoption of computer technologies, their development, and their marketing that we in modern times could guess without having known.

I'm also reminded of the Ashton-Tate software package Framework, which is one of my favorites from the 1980s. It's what they used to call "integrated software", which was a package of several productivity applications: word processor, spreadsheet, maybe a communications program or database or graphing capability, bundled together and sold as a unit. Unlike, say, Microsoft Works or DeskMate, Framework featured powerful versions of these tools and the ability to create composite documents, as well as a programming language with Lisp-like semantics to automate workflows. Because of this, Ashton-Tate pitched Framework as an executive decision-making tool, which was quite a bit different from how competitor programs like Lotus 1-2-3 were marketed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQMc0yIbvDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIx-TGUkiSg

>>bitwiz+(OP)
Not related to this discussion but, it's fun to see a word from The Left Hand Of Darkness here.

>>bitwiz+(OP)
Executives still consider being able to tell subordinates what to do in person more important than the work itself. See Back to Office vs Work from Home.

>>bitwiz+(OP)
Lotus Symphony was a (later?) incarnation. Basically things evolved to more loosely coupled incarnations of office suites which ended up being pretty much from Microsoft (OK, LibreOffice) and then Microsoft and Google online. The end result was pretty much the same. If you weren't in a dominant office suite, you pretty much didn't exist except for specialized users.

>>Nition+A
Near as I can tell, shifgrethor means something like personal dignity, prestige among peers, legitimacy, autonomy, and authority -- all at once. King Argaven considers Genly Ai's existence (and his offer of union with the Ekumen) a threat to his sovereignty as king, because of that Karhide's sovereignty as a nation, also because of that his worth as an individual. He can't separate these concepts because they are all one, they are all shifgrethor.

This insight helped me understand the mindset of the IBM executives, which I wouldn't have before; just dismissed it as wrongheaded pre-boomer silliness. The executives saw demeaning themselves with the scutwork of looking things up for oneself as an attack on their position, their dignity and worth as individuals, and the organization as a whole -- perhaps even society as a whole. Those filthy hippies with their (sissy voice) "collaborative work environments" and their "interactive terminals". They're working for the Reds, I tell ya, trying to unravel the nation from the inside!

I owe LeGuin a profound debt for opening my mind to mentalities vastly different to my own, yet still essential to the history of the computing world I live in.

>>bitwiz+5a1
Absolutely, I think you used the word perfectly.

Have you read Stranger In A Strange Land? The alien word "grok" from that book has a similar way of being useful, and that one actually managed to make it into general speech somehow - at least by hacker types. In the book it's an alien word that literally means "to drink", though it really means something like "attain a real understanding of."

>>Nition+EC1
Yes, I read Stranger in a Strange Land, but I grokked "grok" before actually reading the book: the Jargon File has an entry for it and uses it liberally.