![]() ![]() "I hope to address an audience like this in 2047," Microsoft's chief of technology Nathan Myhrvold told a gathering of computer scientists last spring. "A lot of people complain about what they want once they get it," says Avron Barr, a research director at Stanford's Computer Industry Project ( see sidebar).Ĭomputers are improving so fast, industry gurus say, that in 50 years we will achieve immortality by loading the sum of our experiences onto memory chips. He's even harsher in print: "Software can easily rate among the most poorly constructed, unreliable and least maintainable technological artifacts invented by man-with perhaps the exception of Icarus's wings."īut industry experts at Stanford and throughout Silicon Valley point out that consumers are still gobbling up computers-so they can't be that bad. "Nobody would tolerate telephones that crash every other day," says Paul Strassmann, a former chief information officer for Xerox and the Department of Defense who is now a computer columnist. ![]() More than half of the respondents to a recent ComputerWorld magazine survey found serious flaws with their new machines, right out of the box. Even brand-new computers fail at an alarming rate. 7 on the Better Business Bureau's nationwide complaint list, just behind used-car dealerships and home remodeling contractors. In fact, so many people complain about these piles of silicon, wire, metal and glass that computer vendors are now ranked No. The world is starting to notice that computers are cranky, complicated and decidedly user-unfriendly. ![]() It turns out I'm not alone in my frustration. But if personal computers are so great, I have a question: Why did my laptop just crash-for the fifth time today?Īnd Stanford grad and veteran computer journalist that I am, why can't I figure out how to move a picture from the top of my screen to the center? They're supposed to make us richer, smarter, even happier. ![]()
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