Reducing the Intrusiveness of Computing

More than 40 years ago, computer-age pioneers Seymour Papert and Alan Kay envisioned the pervasive use of computers in modern society. They grappled with the idea that computers might function to support the individual behavioral enactments that underlie everyday tasks. Support for behavioral enactments was to be provided to the individual at the moment of need and in a non-intrusive manner. Papert and Kay’s vision would not be realized for more than three decades. One company that has led the charge to make computing software less intrusive is Google. In fact, the efforts of this company toward less invasive software will likely give it publishing rights to the predominant form of productivity software in the near future.

The key contributor to the success of Google’s brand of non-invasive software is Google’s focus on the elimination of tasks that must be performed to enable users to generate products or artifacts. For example, generating and sharing a Google Doc requires far less effort than generating a Microsoft Word document and sharing it with colleagues. A Google Doc is automatically saved and does not require users to execute a series of commands to save a document. This functionality is an improvement over productivity software generated over the past two decades, as the majority of productivity software produced during the past 20 years required users to execute numerous commands in the generation of individual artifacts. Such requirements have made productivity software less user-friendly. Improved sharing capabilities represent another improvement of a Google Doc over past developments of productivity software. A Google Doc can be shared by clicking a link, typing an email address, and clicking a Share & Save button. These three steps are far less intrusive than the steps involved in creating a Microsoft Word document and sending the Microsoft Word document via email.

The functional utility of a Google Doc shows that the vision of pioneers Seymour Papert and Alan Kay is finally becoming a reality.