anti-Causality


Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Goggle Docs: The end is near

Goggle Docs will soon force an upgrade that makes pages exact copies of Microsoft Word pages, but in a highly crippled format (as if Word isn't crippled enough).  Google Docs has not been a great experience, as, for instance the spreadsheet function is too weak for normal use (sycophants will disagree, of course!). There have been many other problems. One strength is the use of Mobwrite, which allows simultaneous collaboration (not available with Word, of course), but that was written in the public domain.

A great many people are panicked and upset and attempting to forestall the process here on the docs forum.

The main problem for me will be that I cannot construct documents in a single stream, and this important to me because I use constructive writing techniques
such I as write about in wikiology.  

Other important losses will be the ability to 
  • share documents using the web (publishing) and using 
  • xmlrpc to upload documents to blogs. 

From my experience with technology, there are no real reasons for force upgrades, and in the case of google docs that is even more the case.  This is not a for-profit service, it is a "false charity" service to give the world the impression that google "pays back," which is especially important as it is basically an advertising corporation that has leveraged a search engine.  Another example is Wikia -- the most advertising obnoxious wiki in existence.  It is owned by the same person who controls the Wikipedia,  Jim "Jimbo" Wales, which, apparently he created to create Wikia -- lying all the way.  Truth, lie are irrelevant in these cases, as for-profit drive, which in people is technically obsessive behavior, is not actually human.  Writely, the company behind Google docs has, in particular, left artifacts of insanity as "comments" in its html text: paranoia.

What is the solution?

Unfortunately, for reasons I write about, it is pointless to ask for reprieve -- Google and with it Writely is successful for the reason that highly professional people have no concern for the needs or feelings of others; no empathy.  This, make no mistake, is the illness of aspergers, and dominates all human activity, even if it appears to beneficial -- there is always a hook.

Well, I generally encourage people not to upgrade anything (with the important exception of security patches).  This is because the technology industry has reached the limits of its abilities and is attempting regression to compensate for the fact that it (being mentally obsessed and defective in other ways, and hence incapable of actually innovating) has eliminated all the normal people from its work staffs in favor of those with the problems it has.  I heard this referred to as reducing the staff to the "best of the best."  In Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford would call it the authoritarian triumph over the democratic technic, or normal people.  (This classic written during the great depression shows the consistency of authoritarian, or oligarchic, behavior throughout history; though Mumford did not identify authority with academia, the core oligarchy -- and worst offender).

Clearly, from the beginning, it was obvious that a clear page should appear when no URL is specified, and that, being a composing canvas, would be the place where thoughts manifest into communicative ideas -- the first step for collaboration.  That was the "composer" that Netscape created that really didn't go anywhere.  We do have a number of superior composing screens in the public domain (more flexible and reliable than Google doc's), and it should be elementary to create servers that can "zing" the composed text to wherever it needs to go.  So the Google docs server app is obsolete in that the paths for composed text can only go in the direction of what Word has dictated -- and trust me when I tell you that MS Word is so obsolete that it is hard for me to comprehend how it survives--but I know it is the same (small) set of mental illnesses that plagues us all everyday in every way.

Five or so years ago, I concluded that Docs should really be a "CSS" composer, so as to allow writers to create, share and modify templates for document types using well-described formats such as technical research papers have.  Users could also specify subsections of this templates to create further variations, and could then, in a bottom-up fashion, define for servers how future data can be fed into the formats.  Graphics would also be easy, and highly attractive.

Then, a few months ago, I worked with Inkscape to create SVG files (which can be converted to PDF).  SVG is an XML (or extension of HTML) that is fully graphics capable to make illustrations or maps.  (I used to create psychological genograms, which are sophisticated family trees.)  The W3C (controller of web content formatting) has specified that SVG files be able to contain any HTML.  This means that SVG can be the container for any content, and being fully graphics capable, and be used to instantly create the most beautiful pages.  This is, in my opinion, the way to go  -- how to implement it, I am not certain yet.

On this path, I think I will implement a Perl-based Wiki to make the composer concept happen.  Being Perl-based it can implement all the basics of the operating systems (which are universal) and web communications very simply (and traditionally).  Another important change that has to be made that can be manifested through this composing idea is to bring the web to the user by making things "app-less."  This means that the apps are really one app which is your browser which then implements the core capabilities of apps which are libraries or modules within the browser.  A step in that direction is to put the web server app (that replaces Google docs) in the machine (and accessed through the desktop) and having it "share" with other similar systems universally rather than sending it to a central server (running the "app") to be controlled, and possibly abused, as in our case.  In short, central servers cannot be trusted because the people running them are only subsets of humanity, and the solution is to make your own computer the controller of your data.  This is not to say servers are eliminated; they cannot be, but they will act as directory servers, or massive matrix pointers which can then be used to join information based on similarity of content, and hence users based on similarity of thought and ideas.