”The computer`s hardware is its body; the software is its soul . . .”
-George Morrow, ”Quotations from Chairman Morrow”
Once upon a time, the small-computer business produced as many eccentric characters as silicon chips. There were angry young women, caustic old men, robber barons and pirates of both sexes. There were nerds and geniuses, businessmen from hell and programmers from space.
But there was only one philosopher.
Now the business is full of marketing specialists and ”spin doctors,”
middle management with vested interests and financial officers with MBAs. But there`s still only one philosopher, and while he`s waiting for the next computing wave, he has discovered the secret of why no one can program VCRs.
”Software,” George Morrow said, ”is very culture-dependent, and it may be our salvation against the Japanese. The reason VCRs are impossible to use is that the Japanese are in charge of the user interface. They simply don`t know how we think.”
Oh, yes, here`s a quick aside: (there are lots of quick asides with Morrow):
”In the early days, we used to say that we wanted to make computers as easy to use as a telephone. Well, we`ve done that now. Not because computers are easy to use, but because telephones are becoming impossible to use.”
Morrow is, perhaps, an unlikely computer pioneer. As the head of Morrow Designs, he produced some interesting and-to use an overused and out-of-grace term-elegant machines. But he failed to move quickly enough to the IBM-compatible world, and the firm went bankrupt in 1987.
He has worked on various projects since then, most recently a notebook computer for a huge Korean company, though Morrow thinks it never will see the light of day for various reasons. He has a theory about that, of course:
”Sometimes, culturally, it`s easier to think of doing something over from the ground up than getting the first one right. Strange.”
Morrow`s original plan, such as it was, was to become a research mathematician, though he arrived there by a circuitous route. As chronicled in the introduction of his one and only book, ”Quotations from Chairman Morrow,” written in 1984 (and now out of print):
”For a while he took engineering,” wrote computer columnist John C. Dvorak (known for pithy quotes himself), ”but he figured that to fully understand engineering, he needed to know physics. He changed his major to physics. Soon he figured that to fully understand physics, he needed to know mathematics. He changed his major to math. Just as he was about to get his Ph.D. in math, he figured that to fully understand mathematics, he needed to know philosophy. So he quit and went to work in the semiconductor business.
`Otherwise, I would have never gotten out of school,` he recalls.”
Morrow caught the first wave of microcomputers, only to be swamped by the second wave-IBM.
Now, from his home in Hillsborough, Calif., he`s watching for the third wave. It is, said Morrow, a question of metaphors.
There are, Morrow said, a number of ways of looking at computers. The easiest and most common way is to look at the hardware. After all, that`s what computer-makers sell. They are the boxes-faster, newer, more powerful, in color, with or without tailfins.
The boxes, however, said Morrow, a maker of boxes, are irrelevant.
”Without the proper software, computers make very good bookends,” a younger Morrow wrote in ”Quotations.”
”Think of hardware as a necessary evil,” Morrow said.
”The human body, for example, is hardware. It allows the `software`-your personality-to present itself.”
But there is another level beyond software, another way of looking at computers. We can, Morrow said, speak of the computer as metaphor, as representing something else.
”The metaphor for personal computers is a typewritten piece of paper,”
he said. ”Every application that addresses itself to something these days is really a piece of paper. It may have rules and line or columns and rows, but it`s a piece of paper.”
The original computer metaphor, in the days of the mainframe computer, was a deck of cards-information punched on a computer card, then sorted, sliced and diced by the room-sized machine. With the advent of mini-computers, the metaphor changed. Instead of a stack of cards, it became a teletype machine.
”The thing that distinguishes the microcomputer revolution,” Morrow said, ”is a keyboard and something that resembles a piece of paper in a typewriter.”
The next metaphor, he said, may be just over the next hill.
”I don`t know when, but it`s going to be the piece of paper with a pencil, or a scribe, or whatever you want to call something to write with. There are a lot of people working on that today-the notepad machines, which will be the civilizer for that metaphor.”
Here`s another aside from the Chairman: The Japanese never will best us on handwriting-recognition software, though Sony has such a machine available in Japan. ”We don`t have any rules on the way we write. The Japanese do, so their handwriting is more standardized.”
Without having to deal with the ”mishmash” of modern American handwriting, the Japanese won`t be challenged enough, Morrow said.
”Being successful is sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a company,” said Morrow, who has an intimate knowledge of such things.
”There`s no negative feedback from success. The only way progress happens is through failure. . . . There`s no way to get better through success except by luck. Of course, I`d rather be lucky than smart. The problem is, luck is so fickle.”
The hardware for the new metaphor probably exists, he said. But remember- hardware is irrelevant; the neatest hardware in the world doesn`t matter.
”There has to be a Killer App,” he said-an application program so compelling that people are willing to buy the hardware just to have the software.
Morrow had a quotation concerning this, too: ”The computer is simply a device to amplify mental powers. It provides leverage for your mind.”
There have been, Morrow said, only two Killer Apps in the brief history of PCs. ”Not word processing, either,” he said. ”VisiCalc and desktop publishing.”
What, he asked rhetorically, is the next Killer App? When will it happen? ”Well, I`m not a software guy,” he said. ”It took me a long time to recognize the importance of VisiCalc . . . and I`m not sure I`m any smarter about what a good, significant piece of software is.”
What he is sure about, however, is what will happen when the metaphor changes.
”I predict that no company will make it across the metaphor,” he said.
”Only one company has survived the change in metaphor from mini to micro. Only one-IBM.”
While he`s waiting for the Killer App, Morrow continues with his first love, hardware.
”I`ve never been intrigued with games,” Morrow said, ”because when you get done, nothing`s happened. But if I make a piece of hardware, and somebody uses that hardware to run a program that helps them write a business plan for a new business, and that business is a success, then I`ve been a little part of that.
”I guess it has something to do with trying to be immortal.”
What he`d really like to do, though, maybe more than anything else, is be the one still standing when the metaphor changes, the philosopher who made it. ”It would be nice to do that, wouldn`t it?”
