Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The only reason your keyboard follows this convention today is that one of the first typewriter manufacturers fatefully chose this peculiar order (apparently to minimize typebar clashes) back in 1874 and it became the dominant keyboard format. It got locked in, so to speak.
I'm only about 30 pages into You Are Not A Gadget, but already Jaron Lanier has gone over my head with many of his musings about the culture of technology. One area I'm finding fascinating, however, is his thoughts on lock-in.
He describes it this way:
"The process of lock-in is like a wave gradually washing over the rulebook of life, culling the ambiguities of flexible thoughts as more and more thought structures are solidified into permanent reality."
Okay. That's a bit dramatic. But what he's saying, I think, is that lock-in -- from the QWERTY keyboard to the MIDI standard in music software to thousands of other standards and conventions we use every day -- narrows our options at the same time it helps spread a technology to more people.
Lanier again:
"Lock-in ... removes design options based on what is easiest to program, what is politically feasible, what is fashionable, or what is created by chance."
Two more examples come to mind as I read that.
One, how advertising agencies and marketing professionals often shut down potentially innovative ideas by resorting to locked-in best practices -- better to follow a templated look or "proven" strategy than take a chance on something different.
And second, the healthcare debate in the US. (If you know me well enough, I can always bring it back to the healthcare debate in the US, LOL.)
Read that last quote by Lanier again and try not to think how perfectly it describes the challenges faced by those who want to change the current system. It's inefficient and unfair to millions of people, there are clearly better ways to offer everyone healthcare, yet attempts at change are painful to watch precisely because the system is so locked in.
I haven't read yet how Lanier proposes countering lock-in but I'll let you know when I do.
How about you? Is lock-in a good thing on balance? If not, how do you unlock?
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