Simplicity, Power, and Elegance:

The Birth of Beautiful Technology

Valentino Ulysses Stoll

November 26, 2002

 When something is beautiful, it is difficult to explain why. It is a feeling that

simply overwhelms the body with a sense of complete satisfaction and utter amazement.

In the book, Machine Beauty, by David Gelernter, the creation of both computers, and

technology in general, is redefined through aesthetics. “Great technology is beautiful

technology.”(132) David Gelernter describes the evolution of the personal computer and

the ugliness of its outcome. This ugliness is primarily defined by the triumph of

Microsoft over Apple; or, as described by David Gelernter, as a triumph of manliness

over beauty. It is this very triumph that has driven him to thrive in teaching the world

alternatives. The creation of Lifestreams, in which Gelernter plays a major role, is an

idea in the making to expand the minds of today’s computer world; to show people there

are alternatives. Although it has its faults, it is still a step in the right direction; a step

toward a better understanding of the world of computers, technology, and society.

Without the aid of art, this step cannot be taken.

Former graduate and now professor of Yale University, David Gelernter, has

revolutionized the way technology should be viewed. His brilliant analysis of the truth

underlying technology shows a new meaning of the futuristic computer age, and that

which led up to it. Upon his quest to beautify computers, David and a fellow colleague,

Nicholas Carriero, created a coordination language—Linda—which simplifies problems

in a powerful manner using a method called tuple space. “A coordination language is

software glue that allows programmers to build software ensembles—collections of many

separate programs all working together on the same problem.”(95) Linda is a very time

efficient device that is uses “teamwork” of many computers working together to complete

one task. Using the basic principle of cyberstructures created in the process of Linda’s
development, David Gelernter and several colleagues have expanded, and work to create,

an alternative to the contemporary desktop. Lifestream is basically a timeline of your

information stored in tuple space and run though cyberstructures. This idea will soon

lead the way to the future of new, and hopefully, beautiful alternatives. Aside from his

brilliance in the field of computer science, David Gelernter has acquired a quite

prestigious role in journalism. He has contributed greatly to the literate community with

several books to spread his ideas and knowledge. One of which contributed to his

survival of the Unabomber.

In the fight for popularity, beauty seems to be the least important. The failure of

the Mac still continues to bewilder those of the computer world. Mac’s failure was the

cause-and-effect of poor marketing and misjudgment. Aside from Microsoft’s automatic

lead in the war for popularity from it’s pre-distribution of DOS machines, it seems that

Microsoft would fail the simple beauty held by Apple’s design. “It has many flaws and is

a long way from great art, but Apple's desktop is modestly beautiful beyond question....”

(35). Macintosh could have improved their marketing and advertising to better show

both the public and business worlds, how much more efficient and structurally developed

their product was. Basically, the popularity and triumph was held in the hands of the

business world. The computer had just begun an uprising of virtual filing and storage.

The so called “computer age” was in its elementary prime in what would soon be a quick

jolt to the future. Companies thus relied on “computer experts” to decide on which

system would best provide the solution for the companies needs. At the time, most

computer experts were very unimpressed with the new system presented by Macintosh.

Thus the computer experts, for the most part, decided Microsoft was a better choice. In
order to correct this misjudgment, Macintosh could have better presented their product to

target the importance of simplicity and powerful design to the companies rather than the

computer guru’s world. This could have been done by holding large presentation projects

showing an in-depth overview of the system. Advertisements could have been placed to

target the businesses, underlining its simplicity and more appropriate and elegant design.

Also advertisements could have been created to show the “ugliness” of the Microsoft

system and its major disadvantages.

When defining software with “machine beauty” there are several aspects that

must be considered: simplicity, power, elegance, and consistency. These aspects hold

true for both visual and coding qualities of the software. Karel the Robot software does

possess a modest form of “machine beauty”. It is simple, and powerful. Simple in that

the instructions are direct and specific and language is very concise. The robot performs

actions exactly as instructed and displays it in a visually simplistic and precise way.

Karel the Robot thus posses a sense of “machine beauty”.

David Gelernter’s project, Lifestream, is a step in the right direction. However,

there are too many factors in this development that would create a very unstable

interface. One factor is the threat from hackers and viral infections. Because the

structure of the system works through the combination of many computers working

together, viruses would easily spread, and could possibly cause major damage. Another

problem with the idea is that it would decrease a user’s privacy. Too much private

information would be held. Overall, it sounds like a great idea for businesses, however,

seems a little far fetched to reach homes of the private user.

 Gelernter was right in saying that, “Every technologist ought to study drawing,

design, and art history.” The key to creating pure machine beauty is through the imitation

of human beauty. One can only understand the concept of reality and pureness when they

can understand the natural forms of art and what it creates. Creating software is an art

form. In order to create a program with machine beauty, the program must result in a

sense of absolute completion. No flaws of any kind. It is this sense that programmers

must create to provide efficiently consistent machines of pure beauty.