
Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On - yarone
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/why-the-first-laptop-had-such-a-hard-time-catching-on-hint-sexism/262220/
======
dsr_
How many secretaries do you see on _Mad Men_?

The big boss might have two. Everyone is who is anyone has his own. You are
clearly a junior manager if you share a secretary. Only the peons type.

This changed. It changed slowly. For years, senior people did not type their
own email, or even read it on a screen. A secretary would print it out, and
the exec would dictate, live or to a recorded, any responses. Did the exec
know how to type? No. Why should he? Having a keyboard is a sign that you
don't have any power.

Long nails indicate that you don't do manual work. High heels mean you don't
walk long distances. An expensive watch means you can afford one -- it tells
the time about as accurately and about as reliably as a mid-priced or cheap
watch.

How does it change? Very simply: when the people who are high-status do a
certain thing, people who want to be like them copy it. When technical
entrepreneurs became rich, people copied them. Do successful Wall Streeters
carry Blackberries? Everybody else did, too.

Status, yes. And sexism, too: typing is women's work. Low status.

~~~
bane
"Having a keyboard is a sign that you don't have any power."

Just as importantly, today not knowing how to use a computer is a bad sign in
the workplace, one that will cost you your job.

I contract my time at a place with a fair number of very senior people (age
50+). A few years ago it wasn't like that, most people were under 35 and
having grown up with computers had a reasonable mastery of basic computer
skills.

When the contract changed the client desired a more skilled labor pool and
thus amped up the requirements for most of the positions. What happened? A
flood of computer illiterate old-school types who tried to get the few
remaining "youngsters" to do the bulk of the work.

It went over very poorly with the younger workers, the contractor and in the
end the customer. It was made known that if you didn't have basic computer
skills you wouldn't have a job...to be verified by a test before beginning
regular work (given after the new hire training period). The result? Something
like 85% turnover in the aged 50+ pool inside of six months. The group they
have now is not only much better at these basic skills, but a better cross
section of truly needed skills anyway.

Watching all this go down made me think of my father, who in his late 60s
purchased his first computer (in the late early 2000s) and had the
intellectual curiosity to spend hours every day learning to type, fiddling
with various settings, changing the screen savers and background
graphics...till he was literate enough that he could do pretty much whatever
he wanted to do with the machine. He knew the times had changed and it was up
to him to get his act together.

------
primitur
This is a really cute story for me personally, as an old-time Grid user. In my
youth, I was a computer-ops tech, of the travelling variety.

I was lucky enough to be given a Grid compass machine to do my job in the
80's. It was a godsend as a remote tech who had to go places and do things to
computers while maintaining a security profile. My own terminal, my own stash
of notes/profiles/logs, etc. All had to be checked in, after a 7 or 8 day trip
around the US to all and sundry terminal locations.

Damn thing was heavy, and had very little RAM/storage, all things considered.
I was lucky to have a stack of floppies for it, of course, but that was more
bulk to the luggage.

It was one of the first machines on which I built my C chops, as a coder. I've
still got muscle-memory for its dodgy * location, I think.

I lugged the thing around for years, then .. suddenly .. back at HQ .. the
Atari Portfolio.

:)

Instant upgrade.

I still use an OrangeRedAmber as my term color. Oh, how I'd love to have a few
Grid screens around to plug into things, it was truly a bask of radiative
glare.. ;)

------
forgottenpaswrd
More than sexism it is statusism.

I could understand secretaries instantaneously loosing respect if they see
their bosses typing with one finger.

It happened to me with one operator of a lathe when he discovered I had no
idea or cared how to program it because I was "engineer"(I had other work to
do). I had to study the thing on a weekend for regaining the respect from
those people on my team.

Imagine being in the war and your life depends on a person(e.g a sergeant) and
the only thing you know about this person is that he is incompetent on what
you know to do well... not good.

~~~
akgerber
Of course, in that time even more than today, sex & status were deeply
intertwined. It wasn't a coincidence that the secretarial pool was all female
and the executive suite was all male: women had typing classes in school, went
to secretarial school, and got jobs as secretaries or other low-status
positions; men became got jobs as clerks or went to college, and if the bosses
liked them, they were promoted to executive positions. There usually wasn't
much of a career track from secretary to executive.

~~~
redthrowaway
>women had typing classes in school

I'm wondering when this changed to include all kids. I remember doing Mavis
Beacon Teaches Typing on my home computer at around 6, then again at school in
grade 2. This would have been in the early 90s, and every kid at my school
took typing classes once a week. By grade 3 or 4 they were teaching us Basic
on the Apple IIe. Around that time as well, school assignments had to be typed
and printed off for submission. Did other people have the same experience,
with computers being a part of your official early education?

------
marshray
A few possibly-relevant memories from 1983:

* I knew a few top execs who were happy to type (this was a software company). They (and many others of us in the company) had dial-up terminals at home. These were used to access the company mainframe.

* The main business cases in 1983 for the PC were typing letters/memos, primitive filing, and spreadsheets. These are things that top execs typically delegated to secretaries and middle managers.

* This thing cost more than multiple automobiles.

* The Military used male secretaries for typing. They also had more money than they knew what to do with in 1983.

~~~
kokey
Most importantly, I think, is that you could employ a secretary or two for a
year or two for the same money, and they would do the typing for you.

------
bajsejohannes
How is this specific to laptops? Seems like just the same would apply to a
desktop computer.

~~~
lukifer
I had the same thought. My presumption would be that laptops are inherently
personal, since the whole point is to take it with you, whereas you could hand
off a desktop to an underling and make them work it for you.

~~~
csense
From the article, it sounds like the laptop marketers were targeting top
executives, presumably because (1) they travel a lot and (2) they have command
of a big enough budget to spend $8K of company money on a tech toy.

For those who don't travel, it would have been difficult to justify the
greater expense.

------
kephra
This reminds me at: forget it: Men can not type!

<http://kephra.de/blog/Programmiererinnen.html#en>

------
rickmb
Sexism aside, marketeers should know better by now than to market innovations
to business executives. They are the last people to adopt new technology, and
even if it does happen it often comes with a stigma that hinders wider
adoption, because the product becomes associated with "the suits".

~~~
001sky
Counter-example: the blackberry in 2002.

------
darklajid
Meta: (Ignore if that is too annoying)

Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct.
But they look erratic / strange / stupid from this pov. Not my native
language, so where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or
not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.

~~~
lutusp
> Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are
> correct.

There's no "correct" outcome for an all-caps title, it's a stylistic choice.
Neither right nor wrong. Another example of a stylistic choice is The
Register's oft-exercised habit of emphasizing! a! title! like! this!.

> where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping
> that it isn't arbitrary.

Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely
Arbitrary.

~~~
toyg
I thought El Reg did that only for Yahoo! or other silly exclamation-mark-
including brands...?

Not that I read it much, of late -- could never stand Orlowski, and recently
the site has been defined as "the Daily Mail of Tech", so it's not like I have
much of an incentive...

~~~
lutusp
> I thought El Reg did that only for Yahoo! or other silly exclamation-mark-
> including brands

I confess I never noticed the contexts, only that they existed. They're common
enough that I suspect there's a macro at the ready in the El Reg editing apps:
text =~ s/(\w+)/$1!/g

> Not that I read it much, of late ...

Same here -- the stylistic memes begin to wear on one.

------
yarone
Reminder of the sociological / human factors to be considered when launching
new products.

------
jacquesm
The first laptop, for people with very large laps:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1>

~~~
zwieback
I remember when one of our Apple ][ user group members brought an Osborne 1 to
a meeting. We just about had fistfights to get a close view of the thing.

------
mbesto
So, I guess part of the story we're supposed to take away here is that the
tablet and the smartphone should be no different, right? Laptops/desktops will
be replaced by smartphones and tablets, right? History repeats itself right?

The difference I see is that the smartphone and the tablet all use laptop
concepts (keyboard, visual display, etc). People literally went from not
knowing how to type (which is NOT intuitive) to typing on a keyboard. The
biggest difference now is multi-touch. But the reason multi-touch caught on,
was because it was a intuitive interface to computer-human interaction. I had
to take a course in grade school in order to use a keyboard, I don't for
multi-touch.

In other words, the laptop (and as people have pointed out, actually the
desktop) was a revolution in technology. Mobile devices seem to be much more
an evolution.

~~~
sspiff
"The biggest difference now is multi-touch"

You should try using a single touch keyboard. Keyboards are very much
multitouch.

I am yet to see a more useful reason for multitouch to exist than text input.
Not that one gesture everyone has now been imprinted with. Something else
that's not gimmicky.

Please give me an example, because despite being part of the touchscreen and
multitouch early adopters (I had a Palm, five different WinMo devices, and
imported a G1 before Android phones came to Europe), I am yet to see one thing
I (or anyone else) can do faster on a multitouch panel than I can do with a
keyboard and mouse. I'm not saying these legacy input devices are perfect, but
stupid simple glass panels are definitely more cumbersome for this aging mind.

~~~
mgkimsal
"I am yet to see one thing I (or anyone else) can do faster on a multitouch
panel than I can do with a keyboard and mouse."

Slice through a banana, pear and pineapple at the same time on Fruit Ninja.

~~~
Tipzntrix
Not exactly the same game, but Osu!
(<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K31BYeLNJ0> for a gameplay example) is a
fangame of Ouendan AKA Elite Beat Agents in North America.

The game was originally touch (or stylus) based, but the best scores are all
done through mouse to aim & keyboard to press. This game involves swiping,
pointing, spinning, and more accurate following of drawn cursors on screen. I
think to line up your draw, and make an accurate motion, the mouse will still
win.

Edit: Correction: Stylus is also just as popular, but the keyboard is still
used.

------
figital
I had one of these as a second hand gift from a friend of my dad's who
probably wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole (more like a 3rd generation
one) and it was my primary machine circa 1989-1994. I remember feeling very
uncomfortable the few times I brought it to class in college. Built like a
brick-shithouse. The keyboard was magnificent. I think the killer apps around
then for me were AutoMenu, WordPerfect, Turbo Pascal, and the built-in modem.
Wish I would have saved this with the rest of my retro-stash but it wound up
just getting lost during a move.

~~~
msrpotus
I feel like someday I'll be saying this about my iPad.

------
hollerith
I have no trouble believing everything in the OP.

My dad had 2 secretaries when I was growing up in the 1970s. He was a
mechanical engineer with an MBA. And he didn't know how to type.

------
smountcastle
So is there something happening right now that older folks are rejecting due
to sociological factors but the next generation is embracing?

~~~
dsr_
Sure. Let's look at our own industry cluster.

What is superficial, but denotes status among hackers?

Having an expensive standing desk when everyone else sits.

Having a shaved head when that's not the societal norm. Having long hair
(male) or particularly short hair (female). Interestingly dyed hair for
either.

Extreme coffee ordering used to be a status marker; now it's widespread and
isn't, so much. What was once an indicator that you lived in a rich urban core
is now an indicator that Starbucks has opened a branch in your WalMart.

Running a Mac when the company standard was a Windows box; running an Air when
the standard was an MBP. The first generation iPhone, and for a couple of
weeks, the most recent. (Then everybody else has them.)

Claiming more physical space is a status marker; humans seem to be wired for
that along with all the other primates. Having more space and not doing
anything with it is a more powerful marker.

Siri and similar voice-recognition assistants could become the new
secretaries. If they improve significantly, look for an always-on version that
looks for a keyword trigger and talks back through a speaker. Having an
invisible servant would be a serious status marker, but only if it becomes
both reliable and ostentatious. Having the quiet space necessary to do this
regularly is a marker by itself.

~~~
salgernon
>>Siri and similar voice-recognition assistants could become the new
secretaries. If they improve significantly, look for an always-on version that
looks for a keyword trigger and talks back through a speaker. Having an
invisible servant would be a serious status marker, but only if it becomes
both reliable and ostentatious. Having the quiet space necessary to do this
regularly is a marker by itself.

I like your list, but doesn't the low incremental cost of a virtualized
assistant, as available to Joe Biden as Joe the Plumber, take this out as a
marker?

I suspect most markers going forward are going to have to be physical things
that are more rare, and frankly somewhat useless. 6 legged genetically
engineered green pocket pigs with stupid haircuts and matching sunglasses kind
of thing.

------
nsns
It almost seems like it's the opposite these days: apple's taking the keyboard
off a smartphone convinced non tech savy people to buy one.

------
fallous
Um, they might want to read up on a little machine that came out within a year
of the Grid... namely, the TRS-80 Model 100.

~~~
hnriot
The Trash-80 wasn't a laptop! They were popular though, I had one. My first
memories of laptops were from Compaq, and they were not flat but more brick
like, with fold down keyboards and big slots for the floppy drives. I carried
one of these around for a few years (consulting), eventually it was replaced
with a toshiba T1000 and its offspring.

~~~
bitwize
The "Trash-80" (TRS-80 Model I) was not a laptop, but the Radio Shack Model
100 most certainly qualified. It was a brick -- no clamshell -- with a full-
travel QWERTY keyboard on the bottom and a rinky-dink nonbacklit calculator
display on top. It came with BASIC and some other rudimentary applications.
The OS was menu-driven, and was the last significant piece of software that
Bill Gates personally contributed to.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100>

Writers loved these things because they lasted for ages on a set of AA cells.

