The Family Guide to Digital Freedom

The answer to this question is very simple: an awful lot, even if not all of it,
nor its bigger part, it's money and if we don't use computers.

As far as we are concerned, the word "software" refers to any sequence of computer instructions which is coded in digits and stored inside some electronic device. A single piece of software constituted of one coherent sequence of commands, all linked to each other and designed to perform a specific task (writing text, processing images, playing digital music...) is usually called a software program. Each software program is specialized and, for a lot of reasons which will become clear later, different programs born to do the same job are frequently incompatible with each other.

What if (following the advice in this book) software programs became something that can be easily replaced without disrupting business, just like pens or paper? What if it were much easier than today to have software support or
customization from many different and completely independent contractors,
switching from one to another when the service is better?

The expenses to buy new software licenses and new computers every few years could be sensibly reduced, with beneficial effects for Schools, Public Administrations and businesses of all kinds and sizes, especially medium and small ones. In an ideal world, some of those savings may even end up in your paycheck or, why not, your tax bill or any stocks you might own.

What is actually happening, instead, is that many of the companies from which we buy goods or services are still forced to spend more than they could on their computers, making our bills heavier. This happens all the time, and it only takes a bit of attention to see it. Here are two of the most common examples.

The overcomputing teller

Just about everybody who enters a bank (or any other public or private service agency: real estate, insurance...) complains about all the fees popping out of nowhere which, we are told, are spent on improving customer services, to save us time and hassles and so on. So far, so good.

The next time you go to your bank or any public office, please have a look at the teller or employee desk. Very often, especially in banks, it will be a very cramped quarter in which computer, keyboard and monitor barely fit (never mind the poor employee). Nine out of ten times, there will be some labels on the computer case, declaring that the box was designed for the best operating system on the market, with some top notch processor inside.

For the record, a processor is the central integrated circuits in each computer, the one which runs the software and controls all the other hardware. An operating system, instead, is the base set of tools and programs that make it possible to start up a computer and interact with it at the lowest level. It is the operating system that starts and allows to work all these programs humans actually use to do useful or funny things.

Great, isn't it? Bank tellers, however, only have to deal with a few standard procedures. This is why, almost always, their screen will either be filled by only one, very ancient looking, character window or a Web browser, an enviroment in which a computer mouse would be useless or slower to use than the keyboard alone.

In both cases, the real work happens on some very powerful but remote computer: what you see besides the teller is very little more than a keyboard and a monitor with a very long extension cord. Even very old or limited computers would be enough for that.

Did grandma's plane land or what?

You are at the airport, waiting for some relative to land, when all of a sudden the monitor listing all incoming flights goes crazy, filling itself with small boxes and tiny error sequences. Did it ever happen to you? This accident is so common that there even is an online picture gallery entirely devoted to it.

Another gallery shows the same thing happening on many other devices you use every day, including a McDonald's drive-thru. Very often what is happening is the same thing as in the previous example: somebody bought general purpose, unnecessarily expensive computers and software to display a few lines of static text. But it's no problem, is it? After all, it's passengers who pay for it, and who cares about reliable airplane schedules anyway?

Don't let this pass

If expensive computers are purchased (with your money!) in cases like this, it may be because somebody was fooled by some colorful brochure saying "Nothing free is valuable, our software is the most expensive so it must be the best, too bad it runs only on the newest computers, just pay". In short, the next time check and require that they explain to you just how much of your fees comes from this attitude. Remember that the same kind of tax is hidden in almost every service you use: driver's licenses, insurances, birth certificates, schools, parcel services... if it's done using software, it is likely costing more than it could. Luckily, better solutions, feasible in many real world cases are already available.

How can this be possible?

What exactly is it that makes it possible for software to remain more expensive than hardware, and much less open to free competition? Why can't we (or our governments...) shop for cheaper computers and programs just like we already do with clothes, groceries and screwdrivers? The answer is that all those goods and their providers have no "history": they don't remember where they came from, and the same happens with what we do with those goods. A screwdriver will work no matter where the screws were bought. If you stop going to the same grocery store where you shopped for ten years because a cheaper one opened around the corner, the food you bought at the old place is still edible, and can be mixed with the one you'll buy next week.

Software instead, if chosen and used improperly, is just like nuclear power plants, which remain dangerous even after you've stopped using them. A school can change its paper provider without any compatibility problems, but if it changed computer software without thinking and planning very carefully for it, it would stop working literally overnight. In addition to that, bad software is dangerous also because it can force others to use and pay for it even when they would prefer another program.

The exact reasons why this happens are explained, together with the solutions in another section of the book. For now, it is enough to remember that software, unlike most other goods and services that everybody must use, has much more power to perpetuate and impose itself, and this is the reason why it is so abused and expensive.