The death of Microsoft Word in the wiki-based world

[jducoeur]

As I catch up on my blogs from the past week, I just came across this delightfully sensible article in Ars Technica. It's worth taking a look at if you're into tech, simply because it nicely gels a lot of common sense. Basically, it argues that Microsoft Word is doomed -- not for any of the usual reasons of being slow bloatware, but simply because the world has changed, and Word's fundamental underlying assumptions no longer make sense...

Comments

[outlander.livejournal.com]

I very much like the sentiment behind it--and my work life would be much easier indeed if I could use a net based program for writing & saving documents.

But I don't think Word will die until the technology in non-technology related businesses catches up with that in the computer world. I have no guarantee when I go to work in the morning that the internet will be up (Of course, if it isn't, that is another trick to print something out). And perhaps I am in the minority in terms of jobs, but virtually everything I write in word I do write to be printed. The stuff that I create is used on a daily basis, and might be edited year after year, but needs to be formatted in such a way I know how it will appear on a written page.

I long for the day when my work does not involve long hours spent next to a copy machine, and students can email me their written work (making it legible!) rather than handing in a hand-written copy. But until that day arrives, Word, for better or for worse, will very much be a part of my daily existence.

[jducoeur]

Oh, I definitely think we're talking about a long-term trend here -- something that's going to play out over 10-20 years, not 1-2. But I agree that the trend seems to be there, and I've anecdotally observed much the same as the author: over the past few years, I've been steadily migrating from page-based documents to wiki-based ones, because it's usually a more useful way to do things...

[outlander.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong--I will be overjoyed when my day no longer involves reading scribbling & trying to decipher what is meant by it. And I think it will happen. Just not for at least 20 years. Perhaps longer, unless the state gives it a kick like Maine did with its Laptops in Middle Schools program.

What I wouldn't give to be working in one of those classrooms where every child walks into the room with a working laptop, & is expected to use it for meaningful work. That would be heaven. That might happen here within 5 years or so, depending on how the Maine program plays out. But it will have to come from the state--individual cities would never pony up that sort of money.

[jducoeur]

Well, 20 years is a long time. 20 years ago, most people didn't have personal computers yet, and email was still this odd thing that a few geeks did. (There were *huge* fights in Carolingia about whether official communication could be on email.) The Web had barely been invented.

I do see a lot of signs of things moving in this direction, not least because it's often cheaper and more efficient to do things online. For example, there is a *lot* of momentum to move health care management away from paper onto electronic formats, driven largely by cost.

I'd expect similar things to happen in the schoolroom, especially with the cost of usable laptops going nowhere but down. This is actually a significant recent change. Three years ago, laptops were expensive toys that you had to think about buying, but nowadays they sell netbooks in discount stacks at Costco. Fix some of the form-factor issues, give them just a couple years' more power, cost reduction, and improvements in durability, and I suspect you have a *very* practical tool for the classroom, that only costs as much as a few schoolbooks. I'd be genuinely surprised if that wasn't common at least in middle-class schools in ten years or so...

[ilaine-dcmrn.livejournal.com]

and apparently, Microsoft has just been ordered to stop selling Word:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10308013-75.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

[jducoeur]

Fond though I sometimes am of MS taking it on the chin, I dearly hope this one doesn't stand. The patent is fairly dreadful, and the way they're interpreting it seems to be almost claiming to be a patent on modern XML...