Something Lost, Nothing Gained

mrG — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 18:49:53 -0500

In my watching of pop computing culture since 1975, few things really illustrate what we've lost better than the evolutionary path of Microsoft Word. Originally a tool for writing and communication, the basic character-stream functions of Word maybe have improved from grade-school requirements to sophmore, but that charge of progress has been at the cultural cost of something else even more precious. Way back when we often lamented these food-processors for words as essentially tools for writers designed, tested, proofed and marketed by people who were not writers; in all the years since, instead of leading us to a goal of better writing, we've lead ourselves to a goal of lesser expectations, and in our being collectively Word processed, business documents lost all sense of craft, and all sense of artful style.

Before the mszealots and lawyers jump on me, I don't mean Word literally --- because of it's market monopoly, Word has provoked all pretenders to follow suit, even (sadly) the free opensource versions --- it's been a major disappointment to watch the 30-year evolution of these font painters, a betrayal akin to this being Cronkite's 21st Century and I still can't buy a flying car or videocall home off my wristwatch, and it takes no less than 4 hand-held remotes to switch from satellite-TV to DVD in this house.

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Something Lost, Nothing Gained