RIDING THE COMMUNICATIONS WAVE -- Part I

A while ago, I proposed the formation of a developers cooperative to produce 
OS/2 software. Then I got sidetracked by an extended legal matter involving my 
business. That is over and I won a fairly large settlement. I am now engaged in 
building a small, ad hoc datashare communications system for my company. This 
brings to mind one of the projects I had proposed earlier: the data transfer 
alternative to fax. I see now that it was, on the one hand, too grandiose and 
vague; but, on the other hand, too narrow and timid. In this paper, I will pro
pose a new project -- one that is manageable.



Let me first, by way of setting the stage, lay out what my small company is 
trying to do. Peters (IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE) has written a new book. I 
saw in a bookstore at Heathrow, but only had time to glance through it. He 
seems to be saying that the new paradigm for business will be free-lances and 
free-lances networking in sort of virtual corporations for individual projects.

My company is doing this now -- and has been, really, since 1984. We find 
ourselves with a shifting population of small (one person) offices (often in homes 
corners of other peoples' offices) in England and America. We use fax, portable 
computers, in-house BBSs, remote access software, cellular phones, pagers, voicemail, 
etc. to stay ahead of the larger, more structured competition. It works.

 

None of us knows much about computers. We do not have offices close enough 
together to have LANS. But let me describe a couple of things we have stumbled 
into in our uneducated way.



First, I hate fax machines. Once it was a liberating technology. I carried a por
table fax machine wherever I went. Then I put fax modems in my laptops and 
notebooks. I thought the idea of having to manually rescan received faxes to others 
(in my business, almost every fax that comes in -- and quite long ones, too -- 
has to be sent out to others several times over several months). So I installed 
fax modems on my desktop and used my computer as my fax. With OS/2, I have 
a twoline version of FaxWorks and two fax modems as my main corporate fax. 
With an enhanced parallel port and HPLJ4M, printing speed is fast enough to 
totally replace my real fax for receiving. Moreover, using BBS software, I could 
access my computer from afar and retrieve faxes into my notebook. For sending hard 
copy, however, I had to fax documents from the fax to the computer. This seemed 
rather silly, so I bought an HP ScanJetIIcx and a document feeder. The scanner 
software did not support the ADF, so I cobbled together some DOS scanning 
software from an old Complete Communicator I had lying around. Then I found a 
DOS package that would scan into DCX files and also shuffle the fronts and 
backs of scanned pages together. (Unfortunately, it also tends to bring all other 
processes to a halt during one-half of its cycle, so I am looking for an OS/2 
equivalent.) I now use my Executive Workstation as both my fax and my desktop 
copier. 



My current project is to put ISDN lines in all my offices. We will start to 
send word processing files instead of faxes within the organization. Received faxes 
and scanned documents will be sent as data files within the organization. When I 
am in London, for example, my mail will be scanned in at a decent resolution, 
compressed and sent to my computer in London in data format. I will print out 
what I need at that end. Faxes will be automatically zipped up and sent as 
data files every hour or so. Even Voice Mail files could be sent in this way. 



The virtual meeting is the next step on the agenda. The ability to discuss a 
business matters on the phone with one of my offices and share data quickly and 
interactively. The Intel fight-for-the-cursor product now being sold seems gimmicky to 
me. I want to be able to "push" a piece of paper across the virtual desktop to 
the person I am talking to. The source of the paper can be scanned hard copy 
or computer application generated. Collaborative computing onscreen and video confer
encing are eventual add-ons.



The next revolution in computing will be connectivity. The technology is all 
there, ready to be exploited. Unfortunately, it is in the hands of techies who 
love the wheels and gears and nuts and bolts. The small entrepreneur, who will 
be empowered by the revolution, does not have the time or technical expertise to 
use this stuff. It scares him silly, if truth be told.



The next Bill Gates will be the guy who takes all techie stuff -- the arcane 
Internet commands and protocols, the Unix stuff, the details of telecomputing, etc. -- 
and puts an intuitive GUI on it. What else is needed? A robust multi-tasking 
environment with a flexible GUI of its own. OS/2! 



OS/2 great strength is its weakness: backward compatibility. It runs Windows stuff 
so well (if it did not, it would never have gotten out of the gate) that the 
urgency for native application development is undermined. Developers succumb to what 
I will call the "2.5" syndrome. Put out a native OS/2 app one generation behind 
your current state of the art and tack ".5" on the name. When OS/2 users shun 
their halfhearted effort (why should they settle for an inferior product on a supe
rior OS when that OS gives them the ability to emulate an inferior OS and run 
a superior product?) they conclude that OS/2 is not a good market and stop 
development for it.



A few days ago there was a great discussion on the Internet of why people 
will switch to OS/2 -- or not. The consensus was -- we still need the killer 
app. There is no one killer app. OS/2 is its own reason for switching. Yes, the 
same app running natively under OS/2 is better than a Windows app running under 
Windows or WIN-OS2. But the OS/2 desktop is more productive and liberating 
whatever apps you run. OS/2 harnesses great power and complexity behind a simple 
and intuitive interface.



The obvious next step is to harness the strengths and philosophy of OS/2 to 
connectivity. To add these connectivity functions to the desktop. To hand the small 
business with only one free standing computer the means of interfacing with the 
world on equal terms as his big competitor with its LANS and DP departments 
and Internet access..



In the mid-80's I talked about an Executive Workstation. It was a CPU  sur
rounded by input and output devices, allowing the executive to receive data in 
many forms and output it again in as many forms. It is what I have, essentially, 
built for myself. I now see it expanding to a Virtual Conference Table.



My vision: an insurance broker in New York should be able to call his 
underwriter in London about a risk and "push" a placing slip and information to 
him across the Atlantic as effortlessly as he would across a table. It will hap
pen. It is actually a fairly trivial matter today. What is missing is the integration 
and simplification. In the next Section, I will outline a project to start doing 
this. I am looking for partners.