OS/2 Shareware BBS: 14 Text/14-Text.zip/S12790.ZIP/IAYF.TXT

Text File | 1990-11-20 | 31KB | 429 lines

On November 12, 1990, Bill Gates, Chairman and Co-founder of
Microsoft Corporation gave the keynote address at Fall COMDEX.  He
detailed his vision of the future of personal computing.  The following
'white paper' was distributed at that time.

Information at Your FingertipsTM

Computing changed dramatically during the 1980s. The speed and memory of personal
computers rivaled the kind of performance that was once  available only on large centralized
systems. Many organizations set aside their mainframes and minis and moved to individual
desktops. Computer technology became widely available and essential for everyday decision
making.

As we enter the 1990s, Microsoft believes these dramatic changes and advances can be
brought together and expanded on in a very powerful way to deliver Information at your
fingertips.

Information at your fingertips exemplifies the concept of making computers more personal,
making them indispensable, making them something you reach for naturally when you need
information.

Information at your fingertips is a challenge not only to Microsoft, but to the entire
computer industry. Fulfilling this challenge means we must go beyond thinking about
developing smaller and faster computers or about developing software applications that have
more and better features. The driving vision for hardware and software technology must focus
on making things easier for people while protecting the investments made in the more than 50
million installed personal computers.

This is going to be hard. Personal computers are becoming more powerful and are being
networked together in more complicated ways, but we want the average workday to get easier,
not more difficult. For example, having an extremely large hard disk is great, but only if you
can find what you are looking for. We need to do a better job of thinking about technology
from the point of view of individuals--how they work, how they think, what they need to work
and think more effectively. And then we need to connect them to their work so easily that
using a computer is as natural as picking up a pen or a pencil.

We need to make computers so interesting to use that people feel compelled to explore--not
to find the one infuriating command required to finish a job, but to see the myriad ways this
wonderful tool will get things done faster and more efficiently. Computers should be
challenging to use in the same way that a well-made automobile is challenging to drive--the
surprise is not in the "oops" but in the "aaah." We want people to use computers not because
they have to, but because they want to. In short, we need to put the "personal" back into
personal computers.

Information at your fingertips encompasses what Microsoft has done in the past and what
we want to do in the future. In the early 1980s, we wanted to establish a computer standard
that would lead to low-cost, high-volume computers and software so that everyone could have
a computer at their fingertips and become more productive. The results, DOS and the PC
standard, have allowed for incredible growth and innovation. In the mid-1980s, we began
evangelizing Microsoft« WindowsTM and the graphical user interface to make software easier
to use and more appealing. In the late 1980s, OS/2« systems introduced client-server
computing to the mainstream PC world, bringing powerful workgroup applications to the
average user and making data available corporate-wide. As we walk into the 1990s, we are
poised to bring all these pieces together and expand on them to create a powerful computing
environment.

Ease of Use

Information at your fingertips must, above all else, represent a very personal idea. Today,
information can be obtained easily through newspapers, books, television, radio, audiotape,
and videotape. You don't have to learn anything new to work with any of these common tools.
If the computer is to become the preferred method for getting information, we have to make
the computer simple and appealing. You'll have to enjoy having it on your desk and using it at
home (or taking it with you when you travel), and you'll have to see it as the best way to
gather data.

On the most basic level, the PC itself has to be more approachable. Applications are
becoming easier to install and run, but users still have to worry about things such as
configuration files and manually setting parameters to provide the correct amount of memory
for some obscure function. Compare this with other kinds of high technology. When you turn
on your new television for the first time, you don't have to get out a screwdriver to set the
frequencies for all the stations you want to receive. When you pick up your new car, you don't
have to fool with the electronic ignition. You just turn on your TV, and you just start your car.
You should be able to just turn on your computer, and it should start working. It should sense
the type of monitor you have, the amount of memory, the kind of hard disk, the applications
you have, and whether you are connected to a network and then automatically configure every
detail and nuance of your system accordingly.

Integration: The Opportunity

The first phase of making life easier for users was What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get; the
next phase will be What-You-See-Is-What-You-Need-To-Get. Now that we have high-quality
WYSIWYG documents, we need to help users find and manipulate all the data that goes into
them in an easy, natural way. The integration of PC applications will make both individuals
and groups more productive. As long as each tool in the personal computing world remains
specialized, you cannot deal with information effectively. Information is compound and widely
dispersed. A typical business report may contain text, a spreadsheet, a schedule, graphs and
drawings, and tables, and this information may originate inside or outside the company.

Right now the user has to learn how to use all the different applications required to produce
various types of data, locate all the files that contain the necessary information, and figure out
how to link them all together. The user also has to keep all the applications up-to-date when
data in one or more of the files changes. Software should be able to do all this by hooking the
information together and tracking the connections.

Related problems must also be addressed. How can users locate copies of similar reports
for reference or additional background documents related to the project? How can they be sure
they follow corporate style for a business plan? Who should receive the plan, and how can
users incorporate feedback and track approvals? Automating these procedures frees the user to
focus on the content of the report.

Extending these concepts to all the documents used by a business and to various office and
business procedures makes it possible to combine various standard PC applications into a fully
customized office automation system.

Integration: The Solution

From today's situation, in which the user must manipulate three or four different
applications to produce a single document, PC systems must evolve to the point that the user is
not even aware that different applications are being invoked to produce a document. The user
will simply write, browse, select, and edit different kinds of information within the body of a
document. This must happen without radical changes to the user's work or to the user's
applications to ensure that a broad range of applications will be available and to protect the
company's investment in applications and corporate documents and data.

The first steps for managing compound documents already exist among graphical
applications under Microsoft Windows and OS/2 Presentation Manager.TM Cut-and-paste or
"hot links" (using Dynamic Data Exchange) allows immediate insertions. The next step,
currently being implemented to permit updatable insertions, is called object linking, which
allows embedding and linking.

Embedding is similiar to copying and pasting data between applications, except that
embedded information is still managed by the source application. To update or change the
embedded information, you simply point and click with a mouse and make changes in place.
For instance, if you insert a drawing into the text, you can alter the drawing in the word
processor without going out to the drawing application and then coming back into the word
processor. You can embed and manipulate any type of information in your document,
regardless of its source.

Linking achieves the effect of embedding information from one document into another
without making a physical copy. In a report with a price list table, for instance, you could
copy that table from its original file and manually track any future changes. But this wastes
time, duplicates the data, and is prone to error. A better solution is to link the report with the
table of prices so that any price change is reflected in the report automatically. In addition, the
links are maintained no matter where the original price list, or the report, is moved on the
system.

Common Macro Language Means Easy Programming

If you combine the embedding capability with the concept of a common macro language,
you have redefined what an application is. Microsoft's concept of a common macro language
is that of a simple but powerful computer language included with a variety of applications and
with the operating system. We first described this idea publicly in 1987 and have been moving
toward that goal step by step; the macro languages in our applications have evolved with each
new release. A common macro language will have several advantages. First, it will be easier
to use. Second, it will be the same in a variety of applications, and it will be the same as the
control language used for the operating system so that users don't have to learn new languages
to do similar tasks in different applications. Finally, by using agents to cross applicationsφ
boundaries, users can work in one application and call parts of other applications into play as
needed, or they can start from outside any application and tie them together in various ways.

The embedding capability, along with a common macro language, will allow users to mix
and match applications to meet their needs. For example, corporate developers might want to
tie together typical business applications with special formula editors, image processors,
drawing and charting packages, or product schematics to meet special business needs and
manage new or more specialized kinds of data. They won't have to reinvent the wheel to do a
bit of text-editing or number-crunching or sorting by ZIP codes±just access the part of any
other application that performs those functions and they're done.

Objects: A Way for PCs to Act Naturally

All these capabilities depend on the underlying concept of objects. Today, you must
explicitly direct an application to do something by typing commands or clicking on a menu. To
print a file, for example, you type the command "Print" and the name of the file. In an object-
oriented system, everything is a self-contained entity that is aware of the actions that are
appropriate to it. Rather than act directly to print an object, for instance, you send the object a
message, for example "Print Thyself," and the object responds or not, according to what is
appropriate.

From the user's standpoint, objects represent documents, applications, and processes, and
the user acts on the object (icon) to get something done. For example, dropping a file folder
on the printer prints the file; dropping it on the outbox object mails the file. In essence, you
should be able to grab one object and drop it on another object and the two objects should
figure out what to do. Printing and mailing are simple examples. You want to do the more
complex things easily; for instance, taking a file with numbers and dropping it onto the
Microsoft Excel icon should automatically create or update a spreadsheet, depending on the
context; dropping a file with customer information onto a database icon should update the
database. The system should recognize the kinds of objects and what can be done with them; if
more than one option is available, a menu should pop up and present you with the appropriate
choices. If you drop a file onto the mail object, the system should mail the file±and prompt for
an addressee you forgot to include. The user should simply indicate what is to happen, and the
system should do the rest.

Object orientation profoundly affects applications developers and systems designers.
Microsoft's design goals for objects range from the file system itself, where objects have to be
stored, to advanced computer languages such as C++ and the common macro language, to
products that allow unsophisticated users to build application interfaces with nothing more than
a pointing device and a set of graphical "things" to move around and shape. All these
capabilities are required to make a computer respond the way people think, instead of the other
way around. Whether it is the casual user wanting to solve a recurring trivial but annoying
problem, or a systems designer wanting to build a computer network for an entire
organization, object-oriented tools will make these projects dramatically simpler.

Even the user shell that replaces the operating system prompt, file manager, and program
selector will become object-oriented, providing standard tools for moving, copying, and
linking information within and between documents. These functions will no longer have to be
included in each separate application±they will be in the shell already, and users will be able to
move effortlessly between the shell and an application. The user will not even notice the
difference.

In this context, graphical applications are not simply the best productivity applications on
the market, but they are building blocks for automating the work and business procedures for
individuals, groups, and ultimately whole enterprises. It is this vision that drives Microsoft's
efforts to establish the graphical user interface on the desktop. Only a graphical approach will
allow true integration, and Microsoft will extend today's operating environments and establish
standards to allow this integration to occur. Our approach will be fully open and documented
to allow commercial software vendors and corporate developers to write applications that
integrate with others and to use the rich services provided by the improved file system and the
shell.

Corporate Information: Getting Information from Around the World

Object orientation has a powerful impact on the operating system itself, especially in
helping users find information distributed across a network of computers. No matter how well-
organized it is, a hierarchical file system can bury information so far down that it's hard to
find. A graphical user interface makes the hunt easier but not transparent, because information
can be categorized in several ways, and a traditional file system forces you to choose only one.
For example, something can be filed  by client, by project, or by topic, to name just three
possibilities. Even more difficult is information buried inside a file, such as a chart or a
table±it's invisible to the outside world.

An object-oriented file system will be able to store and understand the objects it contains
and to respond dynamically as files change. If you can remember a key word or a phrase
within a file, or the topic or the author, or whether it was a very large file or was linked to
your October report, you should be able to find the information. And if you're looking for a
single chart hidden within a particular file, you should be able to locate it by the contents of its
title as well. Limited capabilities of this sort are being implemented within applications such as
word processors, but this does not help the user compile a compound document created by
different applications; the applications will use incompatible searching methods or have none at
all. The solution needs to be a systemwide. Because the operating system will handle these
tasks by sophisticated automatic indexing, the concept can be extended to include even those
files that reside anywhere on the network or have been archived offline.

This effort to find and share data goes beyond a single user. Information at your fingertips
expresses the concept of a highly networked environment, in which many people work closely
together even though they may be widely dispersed in an office or organization. Information
from anywhere in your company, from another network, from a mainframe, and from
somewhere around the world must be readily available. Information in any form--text,
database, spreadsheet, word processor, graphics, sound--must be at your disposal. As far as
you're concerned, your personal computer will have the world's largest hard disk because it
will connect you to all the information out there. (Assuming, of course, you are authorized to
get it!) You won't care where the information is, and you won't have to specify a string of
servers or specific locations to find it. All you will have to know is the name of the resource,
or the author, or the kind of resource; the system will figure out where it is and how to get it
to you. A directory service that allows you to browse for information over the network (for
such things as personal or workgroup names, addresses, and topics) will become just another
extension of the system's file-indexing capability.

Email Becomes Backbone of Communication

The most obvious example of widespread corporate electronic communication is electronic
mail, or email.

At Microsoft, you have to know only a person's name to send mail to that person
anywhere on the Microsoft system, anywhere in the world. This system has about 6,000
people on it and is growing every day. With a full-blown directory service--a way to manage
all network resources regardless of the location--you will have the ability to find such things as
the parts inventory for a certain product line or a sales database or the latest presentations on
certain topics or the names of the California technical support team. With directory services,
you'll simply name the resource, and you'll immediately find your data. Email, as we know it,
is just the first step.

The more you think about it, the more possibilities you can see for innovation. What
information should be sent to you versus what should you go out and browse? Can incoming
mail be prioritized? Can you combine voice mail and electronic mail so that you can get either
regardless of whether you call in or log in for messages? Integrating the outside world into
your system is very important.

Another exciting area is using and distributing forms electronically, eliminating the need
for extensive paper forms. This is the next step in broadening the concept of email. Today we
use email to type quick messages or memos or perhaps to facilitate document exchange
remotely. But if you combine email with compound documents and forms, along with a
network that can manage these things worldwide, email becomes the way all important
information will move within an organization. People can interact with and exchange a variety
of information and information types, and sophisticated information can be automatically and
instantly routed to the key people who need it. Individuals and organizations can understand
and assimilate information and act on it within minutes or hours instead of days or weeks.

A critical element in the success of this approach is that the entire user community must
come along in parallel. If some new technology along these lines is implemented on an
incompatible system, it doesn't matter that the new system might have two or three great new
features--what matters is that a corporation would be prevented from unifying all the disparate
information scattered through its ranks. This is another reason that the industry must move the
PC standard forward in stable, rational steps: to ensure that every user and every application
can participate.

Beyond the Office: Computers on the Move

A great deal of information comes to us when we're away from a desktop computer, which
prevents us from keeping information up-to-date in all the places we need it and therefore
defeats the automatic nature of electronic systems. Imagine, though, a portable PC that's really
portable. It's the size of a standard notebook; it has a screen and a touch-sensitive pad. It's less
than an inch thick and comes with a stylus. It can decipher your scribbling. If you circle some
text and draw a line to where you want to move it, it will move the text for you. If you want
to delete a word, you strike through it and it disappears. Like the spiral notebook, yellow legal
pad, or paper time-management systems of today, you keep everything in it--notes from
meetings and phone conferences, to-do lists, schedules, address and phone lists. You carry it
around the office, you take it home, you take it on business trips. You gather the information
as you do now--in real time, in whatever order the meetings, calls, and fire drills happen to
occur.

Once in a while you plug it into your desktop PC. Any information that needs to be
updated from one system to another is automatically adjusted. Meeting notes are distributed
electronically to the appropriate people in your office, and they are notified electronically. If
you changed your schedule on your notepad while you were away, or if your boss wanted to
change a meeting, the notepad checks the main office schedule and highlights any conflicts,
letting you resolve them. If you're at home or on the road, you plug the machine into the
phone, and all this happens remotely. You collect your phone messages and your email in one
easy package.

You now have something that can keep track of your schedule. It makes sense out of the
daily jumble. It eliminates the need to retype information or store it in multiple ways. Your
computerized calendar  becomes so easy you can't do without it. You can even doodle on it
and play games on the plane home when you're too tired to do anything else. You have
information at your fingertips.

Advantages are not limited to people who travel in their work. Consider those employees
whose jobs take them into the field every day, such as sales personnel or delivery personnel.
At best, the information these employees have is twenty-four hours old; more likely
(depending on their current informations systems), it is even older. A combination of a
notebook computer and cellular phone technology could keep these workers up-to-date on the
latest product and delivery information; they could get customer histories and credit
information instantly; they could process and deliver orders electronically, speeding up the
process and eliminating redundant order entry later on; and they could allow the company to
keep its inventory small and flexible.

To prevent the market from being fragmented, these portable systems must be compatible
with desktop systems. Otherwise, vendors have to duplicate their application development
efforts, and users must double both their software purchases and the hassle with learning
curves and redundant data. Microsoft will improve the Microsoft Windows desktop to
incorporate object-oriented technology and will also base its support of handwriting and
notebook computers on the Windows environment.

Home Computers Will Cause Markets to Explode

Information at your fingertips extends beyond the office to the home. Multimedia
computers will broaden the kinds of information that it's possible to deliver, as well as the way
information is delivered. Multimedia machines will offer an integrated mix of sound, text,
graphics, and live motion on the computer screen. Someone constructing a home, for example,
will be able to visualize in three dimensions the size and shape of rooms and the placement and
fit of different styles and sizes of furniture, appliances, and home entertainment equipment.
Consumers will be able to decorate rooms in various colors on the screen to see how they will
look together.

Home applications will differ dramatically from the PC applications we use in the office
today. Most current applications are tools--word processors to write with, spreadsheets to let
you do calculations, computer languages to let you create other products. You have to supply
the information. Software products for the home will be "content" applications containing vast
quantities of information. They will not be simply text databases and reference works. We
have the opportunity to engage the minds of young people throughout the world, to develop
new ways to stimulate their natural curiosity--to get them as excited about important
information at their fingertips as they are about their video games. Interactive geography, for
instance, will allow you to touch a country on a PC screen and instantly see photos of its
people, hear their voices, and take visual trips through the landscape in ways that a static book
can never show. Interactive science programs could walk students through experiments; text,
graphics, and sound will combine to explain important concepts. Even computer games
themselves, sometimes considered a scourge, will become more sophisticated and challenge
more of the thinking and analytical skills of the young rather than just their reflexes.

These multimedia machines will blur the lines between education and entertainment,
dramatically expanding the possibilities of both. Educational software can be made more
stimulating, and entertainment media can be made more interactive and less passive. Content
applications will likely be bigger business in ten years than the business of selling tools, which
is mostly what we do in the PC industry today.

Home users will also need to integrate these new media systems with information from the
office. The common Windows-based platform will allow the exchange of applications and
information. Multimedia, for example, can be integrated into a standard PC, with controls for
sound and video being treated as additional objects that are manipulated by the user, allowing
voice and video frames to be combined into a compound document as easily as a spreadsheet
file.

Microsoft's Role

If there is any pattern to what we are seeing today, it is that information is becoming more
and more complex, and integrating it is becoming more and more important. All these new
technologies await us. Unless they are implemented in standard ways on standard platforms,
any technical benefits will be wasted by the further splintering of the information base. True
notebook computers, for instance, are just beginning to emerge, as hardware manufacturers
rapidly advance flat-screen technology. If these machines are incompatible with existing
standards, they will simply create a small niche in the market because the huge mass of
existing PC applications will not be able to take advantage of them. Microsoft's role is to
move the current generation of PC software users, which is quickly approaching 60 million, to
an exciting new era of improved desktop applications and truly portable PCs in a way that
keeps users' current applications, and their huge investment in them, intact.

Our goal is to evolve the existing PC system standards to include new capabilities such as
compound documents, object-oriented file systems, distributed file systems, handwriting
recognition, and multimedia. A nonstandard implementation might offer a short-term time
advantage for a particular feature, but a better solution would be to incorporate new
technologies directly into the PC architecture or systems software. If the goal is to unify all the
information in our lives, then we must bring the standard along carefully so that all the users
come along.

Because all the requirements for Information at your fingertips are interrelated, Microsoft's
role is key: We are positioned to solve many of these problems at a fundamental level, in the
underlying operating system. The ability to have a file system that stores objects, to have
different objects know how to act on one another, to locate things wherever in the world they
may be, to tie together applications and to share various functions such as charting and
outlining across applications, to expand these efforts into new kinds of technology such as
notebook computers and multimedia machines in the home--Microsoft is in a unique position to
unify all those efforts. As developers of operating systems and networks, we are required to
take a broader view, not just so our applications can run, but so an entire industry can prosper
and a whole generation of users can make the technological leap into the future.

This broad vision will take several years to unfold. We will introduce capabilities over time
in order to bring the user community along without disruption. Each step will need to preserve
compatibility. At each step we will work with independent software developers as we did when
we developed Microsoft Windows and OS/2. Tremendous synergy will develop when large
numbers of applications and information objects have been implemented according to the
standards we are developing. We are excited to be developing software that will let users
automate the handling of daily tasks and information processes without writing a single line of
code, but simply by showing the system what they want done. We are excited to be developing
software that will let users search for information from a greater range of sources than is
possible today and that will  let them file and retrieve things more quickly and efficiently than
they can today. We are excited to be developing software that will let users create information
with greater richness and diversity than anything that can now be done on paper or with
current computer technology. We are excited that we can enable users to solve problems that
up until now could not be solved.

But Microsoft cannot do this alone. Fulfilling this promise requires the cooperation of the
PC industry and information providers. With their help we can deliver the computing power
that can do all this.


Microsoft is a registered trademark, and Windows and Information at your fingertips are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. OS/2 is a registered trademark, and Presentation Manager is a trademark licensed to Microsoft Corporation.