ART + TECH - ART VS. TECH (+ the relationship to java, coding, + vision)

Question

Not that this is a new struggle, here's my perspective anyway.
I have posted this discussion as it's own topic because I thought it deserved it's own heading and title. The original was written in a response in my heart and mind to the current state of geekdom.com.
I am not a tech by birth. I am becoming a tech out of necessity. I cannot afford 3000 programs to develop what I see. I also cannot stand to let what I see coming go undone by myself. I just reliquished a partnership with a tech friend who was working with me on my new company. He had no time to even answer emails. I am now out here in codeworld trying to create everything from scratch.
As a visual artist, "codeworld" is not very familiar, and most of the characters inhabiting this world hate the visual world, and "see" it as unimportant. (Thoughts and interior worlds being much more valuable and relevant).
I know that there are 2,000 languages and options to accomplish this task (see earlier posts---java Html proccessor/templator templater???). Some are pricey, some are labor intensive, some like Java seem to be so complicated that I cannot begin to think of doing this all on my own. I wanted to accomplish this originally by February, and with all the components that I need to get working, I am afraid it could be Feb. of 2005, by the time I get my vision into the real world. (of course by then, what I see will be outdated and obsolete)
Yes, the problem here is money and time....Ha ha....like none of us have not heard that one before. I was told elsewhere today that Macromedia has all the tools I need in a package, and so I looked up the cost. I aint there yet!!!! (is it really that good---macromedia-generator????--------comments please from anyone)
The HTML generator---templator is just one of the pieces of a large pie that I see, as a desktop/ work system. I know that Java can do it. I have seen the incredible visual tools that it can generate. I am frustrated however in that to make visual tools-----I have to deal with a totally left brained -----code based (scientific)-system----that is anti creative---anti----free radical!!!!
I see a delivered final system for the regular JOE BLOW, that will let him deal with "pretty pictures" as a user interface. The systems I "SEE" will allow CAVE MEN to get what they want. No creature should have to go to school to use a damn program============ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After all these years of development, can't we be a little further along in delivering to the "public" a truly user friendly system?????
In the next decade programmers and geeks will become extinct, because they insisted on their 15 milliseconds of fame and fortune. The artist, and intellectuals are coming, and will take over. All we need, all that the public needs, is a "SYSTEM" that makes sense-----real world sense--------not code sense.
If you think I am angry.................well yes I AM....I am tired of techs that cannot take 1 minute to answer email.
Yes, I am your free radical, Yes I am "not of your world" (techworld that is)
Yes, you are all too busy.
Yes, you all are in high demand at your 35.00 to 125.00 an hour rates.
Enjoy it while you can,,,,,,,,,,,,,,it aint gonna last, your market is eroding as we talk mention it.
Smart guys don't just grow up here out of American soil, they grow up in India, in Rumania, in the Phillipines, anywhere.............
Because of the wonderful invention that only you were smart enough to make======the internet,,,,,,,,,,,,,you are now screwed....................
Your tech buddie in Korea only needs 12.00 per hour instead of your 125.00 per hour..............
I would not care about any of this if I did not see a product that needs to get to market. I forsee a product invented (with whatever tech/code/language) that will make AOL look scientific and complicated.
I am waiting for someone who can stand code, but who can dream, and think --------------WAY BEYOND code. Yes, money is an issue, but if the product can get to market--------------------neither one of us will ever have to worry again.
PS...........you may think I am crazy, I do not care. You know that 60 foot TV screen in NYC on the front of the NASDAC---CNB=== NBC building, I saw that.
I saw that in 1979. (only the technological application of it that I saw, cannot be built yet, it will take 10 years of holographic tech to actualize that "vision").
Has anyone ever "seen" what the desktop will look like in the year 2008?
I have.
Join me.
PSS. I am not lazy. I do however want to continue on with my visual computer dreams.............I know there is a lot more. I need some techs to help make these dreams come true. YES, I have now contradicted myself. I am famous for that. I DO NOT HATE TECHS. I am just tired of tech excuses, and tech attitudes.
If all of you have no time, well then fine. I will DO IT MYSELF.
me

Answer 1

Starbase,
You've commented on how unfriendly user interfaces are, and on how the techies don't seem to pay any attention to artistst and intellectuals.
On the first point, I think if you look objectively at what someone who doesn't know anything about computers can do now, vs. what an "expert" could do 20 years ago, you have to admit that the advances are astounding.
My wife, my mother, my brother, all non-techies can compose nice looking documents, send email, search the web for any information they want, without having to know a whole lot of bizarre arcane tech-talk.
Granted, there is a lot of software that has a poor UI, but things are improving, and the harder to use stuff generally (not always) gets pushed out by its frienlier cousins.
Also, you have to realize that while doing certain tasks can be made easy (click here to get email, click there to send new email, etc.), to perform more complex, powerful, flexible operations, you will absolutely have to understand something about the technology you're using.
Anybody can be taught the sequence of keys to press on a piano to create the melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle." However, if you don't understand something about how notes fit together to make chords, how notes, chords rhythm, etc. make a song, how the keys, hammers, dampers, strings, and pedals in a piano combine to produce sounds, then you're not going to be able to use a piano to its fullest capacity. Does that mean that a piano has a poor user interface?
Anybody can dip a brush into a blob of paint and draw a smiley face, but an understanding of how colors combine, of water vs. oil, of different textures of brush and canvas, etc., etc....
And finally, on this point, let me add that you need to be a little more patient. There are a lot of things that have to come together to produce a revolutionary user interface, or even one with significant incremental improvements.
First, hardware has to be fast enough, cheap enough and ubiquitous enough. Take the 5 software packages that you think have the best interfaces and try to run them on, say, a 386. Not pretty I imagine. The 386 is how old? 5 years? 8 years? Ancient history in the computer world, but not that long for real technical revolutions.
The simple fact is that slicker, cleaner, more powerful, yet friendlier UIs require a lot more horsepower (including CPU, memory, video, etc.) to run than a simple text driven menu system. A box with dual 1Ghz P4s and 1GB of memory and a top of the line video card could handle a more robust UI than what's on the average user's desktop today, but who's going to invest the time and money in building that UI when only a handful of people have the hardware necessary to run it.
And hardware is just one piece of the puzzle. Again, given what is asked of a UI--that it's job is to present a front end as close to human nature as possible and convert that to something the underlying hardware can use--the simpler you want it to be for you, the more complex and sophisticated it's got to be behind the scenes. That kind of complex and sophisticated software is difficult at best and impossible at worst without certain software development techniques, tools, and practices. Those are also coming into their own along with the rest of the tehcnical evolution (no "r").
And what about standards and convention? If software A is easy to use, and software B is easy to use, but they operate in completely different, proprietary ways, even for tasks that the two have in common, that's not going to seem all that easy to the artist who tries to use both. Getting all parties involved to agree on a common way of doing things is not a trivial task, especially now that there's an established way that works and that a lot of people are at least moderately comfortable with.
Okay, I've rambled enough about that. I'll just ramble a little bit more about the second point--us techies not soliciting the opinions of the artists--and then I'll shutup.
Are you aware that many (most?) companies that produce software do have artistic folks on staff whose job is make sure the interfaces make sense? I think Apple Computer has had a significant staff in that area since the introduction of the Macintosh. My own company has a creative department who is responsible for the overall look and feel and flow of our software. And in fact, at every job I've had, among the programmers I've worked with, there's always been at least one or two folks who had an artisitic or intellectual bent as well. Believe me, there are a lot of people involved in the production of software who are not just bit-shuffling coders.
Finally, no matter how pretty the front end is, it's behavior needs to be precisely defined. That is, an almost mathematical description of "state x, input y leads to state w, behavior z, output q". It's my humble and unscientific opinion that a lot gets lost in the translation from the artist's vision to the bit-shuffler's spec. The spec is absolutely necessary--without it you'll get software that' wrong and/or unpredictable. However, the non-bit-shufflers of the world often don't want to be involved in the precise statment of behavior, and the bit shufflers don't have the patience or ability to extract and understand the precise spec from the artist's pretty pictures. I honestly think that the difficulty in communicating from vision to hard dry spec is a huge blockade on the path to getting software that does what somebody wanted in the way they wanted it done.
I do agree with your basic premise that it would be a good thing if computers in general were simpler and more intuitive to use. However, I don't agree with your evaluation of how bleak things are right now, how little progress is being made, or how little input the artist/intellectual/"common man" has in the process right now.
Whew. I'm bushed. Online or not, discussions like this should not take place without a good beer/wine/scotch/martini on hand. :-)