Ray Malone's Commentary

I learned this week that 2 of my granddaughters had a good week in school. Emily passed the eligibility test for the SAT and ACT tests. She will this January take the SAT and ACT tests for the first time. She is in the 5th grade. She scored very well on the test and told her mother that the test was quite easy. Her sister Madeline passed the eight grade proficiency test scoring in the 97 percentile range. She is in the 3rd grade. They both attend a private elementary school where each child is taught at that child's learning level.

But education has little to do with creating new or different products. Let me create you an example. No where that I know of is anyone learning to create. Where are the courses in original creative thought. For that we appear to be a thousand years before the dark ages. That is primitive.

Let me give you an example of creative thought.

Think of computer operating systems. Why do they demand that I know the program that created the data in order to access that data. Why does the computer show me what it can do using hieroglyphics. Yes they call them Icons but they sure look like hieroglyphics. to me. Do I really need an Icon to click on to access Microsoft word. I seem to recall hieroglyphics were replaced as a means of written communication thousands of years ago. I don't see how the invention of the mouse makes hieroglyphics the best way to go.

Why can't a computer just show me two types of information. In say... plain old ordinary alphabetical letters.

First give me an easy to learn and fast way to find information stored on the computer.. How about some computerized file cabinets. The user would just need to look in the computerized file cabinet to find the data he wants. It would be like any file cabinet system. It would have drawers, folders and the data.

If I wanted to see a sales order, I would just look in the sales file cabinet drawer that holds orders. Then select the clients file folder and then the clients order that was of interest. The computer would go get and start what ever program was used to do orders. Or I could just "Tell" a computerized file clerk to get me the latest order from XYX Corporation it would get it and give it to me using the orders program. That program could be Microsoft Word.. if orders were stored as Word Documents. Or it could be a spread sheet such as Excel. Perhaps some orders would be documents and others may have been created by a spread sheet program, and still others by a special order program. It would be the computers job to know what program created the data and what programs could access that data.

The other part of the computer would be a list of the types of data the computer could create. Select the type of data and it would get the program to create that type of data. When it came time to save the data created it could put it in the proper file cabinet. Perhaps it could have rules. Such as you can't put an order in the production file cabinet.

But look at the things a computer can do that a typewriter and file cabinet cannot. It could sort the data in one or several file cabinets to give me the information I need.

Show me all the orders that were sold last week. Show me what we produced last week.

Or get me all the email sent to me by my children in the last. week. Or get me all the recordings you have on file by Elvis Presley. Or videos of Barak Obama trashing Hillary. Or faxes sent to congressmen. Or any other data that could be in any file which I am authorized to see or edit.

But what do we have. We have a computer that shows us the programs installed, and does that in alphabetical order by manufacturer in the case of a maker with more than one program, and by program if the company that makes it only makes that product.

And we are how many years into PC computers? The funny think is I wrote such an operating system in 1997. I called it File Clerk. Because it filed the data created and then retrieved it when it was requested.

I kept thinking some big company would release such an operating system any day. Anyone with 5 minutes instruction on using a mouse can run it. I thought about creating a software instructor for File Clerk and each of the programs installed on the computer. The "teacher" would run in the background and teach you how to operate the computer. Just tell the Teacher what you want to do and the Teacher would tell and show you how to do it. There would also be the words, "Teach me how to run this thing" on the opening screen, and if you clicked on those words .. it would.

It will be interesting to see if we keep doing it the Windows and Mac way. Or as someone said.. Just because the way we are doing it now is difficult to use and harder to learn, doesn't mean we will try to find a better way... does it?