People spend way too much time on Facebook and Twitter, and it's leading to a decline in computing productivity.
Has anyone noticed that the computer revolution has turned its focus from improving productivity to wasting time on trivia? If Instagram's one billion dollar sale isn't a wake-up call, then I don't know what is.
When desktop computing began in the late 1970s, it was all about productivity. Spreadsheet programs and word processors sold computers. Until recently, almost all users lusted for their own DBMS programs so they could simplify things by creating personal databases. Nobody does that anymore. Instead, everybody plays Angry Birds.
In fact, if you examine computer usage today, you'll see it's dominated by Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.
Facebook is the worst. People just hang out on it all day, hoping a friend posts something inane that might deserve a comment or "like." It's the most idiotic waste of time I've ever encountered. When you ask people why they use it all day, they always have some bogus argument that it is a good way to keep up with friends, especially if they live far away.
In other words, you were raised in Lawrence, Kansas but moved to Palo Alto, California and now you want to spend all your time keeping tabs on your old pals in Lawrence. Why? Can't you make new friends in Palo Alto? You say it's interesting to you. "Oh, gosh, I knew that Billy and Jessica would get together someday. It made so much sense!"
This is the modern use of the computer and part of the reason that smartphones and iPads are dominating the conversation. The desktop computer is a pure workhorse that can crunch numbers or Gaussian blur a photo in a special way, but this is no good anymore. Diablo III is out! And man it is so cool. It will probably take me three weeks to beat it, after which I will post my results on Facebook so other people can comment on my feat. I can tweet about it and see if others retweet me.
Flash back to the first West Coast Computer Faire, where this all began. I cannot imagine anyone there extolling the virtues of microcomputing or predicting today's use patterns.
Go back in time and try to describe the modern devices we have to the attendees. Tell them there will be terabyte hard disks and 8-core, 3 GHz processors and giant LCD screens, along with a universal network that allows high-speed communications everywhere—all at half the price they were paying for the kilohertz speed processors and machines that required slow audio cassettes to load programs.
The conversation would go like this:
1979 User: Wow. It's hard to believe you have that much power by 2012. It's staggering. I can only imagine the fantastic uses your generation has found. The breakthroughs must be incredible. Tell me about some of the popular products.
Dvorak: Angry Birds and Facebook.
1979 User: What are they?
Dvorak: Angry Birds is a game where you use a slingshot to shoot birds into the little forts built by pigs. You try to knock them down and kill the pigs.
1979 User: You're kidding, right? What about Facebook?
Dvorak: It's called a social network. It's a collection of your friends. They tell you what they are doing and you tell them what you are doing. You trade pictures, too.
1979 User: What? You have all this computing power—something we could only dream of—and you use it for these silly purposes? You have got to be joking.
Dvorak: Let me tell you about Twitter. And, yes, it is called Twitter. It's a microblog.
1979 User: A microblog?
Dvorak: Never mind, it's dumb, too. Sorry, we all let you down. Let's face it, we've turned into idiots.
You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.
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