By anybody’s standards, the Sudan is a hostile environment: fine dust
forever in the air; power supplies that are subject to spikes, surges and
blackouts; and, of course, the heat. In fact, anything that can happen to
a power supply frequently does, the most common problem being massive over-voltage
when the power comes back on.

So what is to be done in order to introduce computers into a developing
nation? Ignoring for the moment the question as to whether the computers
are actually appropriate, the immediate reaction is to shroud them in an
environmental cocoon that would probably be called snug by anyone in Britain.

First, you sort out the power. You lay in a special power line. Then,
for good measure, you place a suppressor and surge protector on it, and,
just in case, you add an uninterrupted power supply to allow you a period
of grace if the power does go off. For most people using personal computers
in Britain, such measures are more or less unheard of these days, and tend
to be regarded as luxuries. Not so long ago, the screams of anguish when
a machine crashed if the cleaner plugged in the floor-polisher, or if someone
knocked the desk and rattled the power cable, could be heard all around
the world. Nowadays, most personal computers are tolerant of such things.

Next, we have to deal with heat and dust. Again, no problem. First,
you air-condition the room. Then, when nobody is using the computers, you
protect them with dust covers. So far so good, but what have you done? The
answer is that you have created an atmosphere not far short of that required
for mainframe operations: special power, temperature control, dust-free
(well, some things are impossible in the Sudan, but you try).

Unfortunately, there is a price to be paid in creating such an ideal
environment, and that price is to make the computers inaccessible. Consider
my office in the Planning Department of a Sudanese ministry. The doors and
windows are always open, and not just so that a draught blows through. Work
here is a social experience: in how many places in Britain can you walk
through the director’s office unchallenged, without even knocking on the
door, to get a glass of water? People are in and out all of the time. This
is not the sort of place in which you can keep the computers. As a result,
they sit in a little room, attached to the Documentation Centre, and a good
walk from anybody in the Planning Department. The room incorporates all
the features I have described above, except that the air-conditioner is
broken and air movement is provided by a large propeller hanging from the
ceiling.

And here’s the rub. We have got computers, personal computers, just
like the ones that sit on everybody’s desk in Britain. But they are not
close to hand. Such machines do not belong in special little rooms: people
work with personal computers because they are there in the office. If you
have a typewriter in the office and a computer in another building, you
have to be a true techno-junkie to go and use the computer to hammer out
a memo.

What is needed are computers where people will use them. If you are
going to have to trek back and forth from the computer room after pieces
of paper you forgot, and you have no way of knowing whether the machine
is going to be free when you get there, then you won’t bother. After all,
you can always do it the old way, sitting down in your office with all of
your papers in front of you, writing it out on a piece of paper and getting
a secretary to type it up. As a bonus, the secretary will probably do it
in Arabic as well.

So do we really need the protective cocoon? Look at how computers are
treated in offices, schools and universities in Britain. How many have dust
covers? How many schools use computers in dusty rooms with blackboards.
How often are computers placed on desks near windows where they can be heated
by the Sun? In my experience, the answers are, respectively: not many, most
of them and quite a lot.

It seems to me that we are being over-protective towards our personal
computers. Dust is a serious problem, of course, but a disc drive which
drops a door across the drive is the obvious answer to that. Power is also
tricky, though with surge and spike protection, modern machines are a good
deal better than those of even five years ago.

Rather than engineering an environment to suit the machines, we should
be providing machines that can work in the same environment as the people
who use them. Lap-top computers would seem an excellent solution in this
respect. In terms of computational power and storage, they can match the
desk-tops. They are designed to be roughly handled and, at the end of the
day, folding the screen down and putting it away in its case will protect
the machine from dust overnight.

It is true that, removed from their protected environment, the machines
might be more liable to breakdown, but at least there is a chance that they
will be used. Unless the machines are easily accessible to people in their
everyday work, the chances are that they will simply be ignored.

Until recently, I worked in a British university. Most problems could
be solved by a shouted question across the lab, and I could communicate
with computer professionals all over the world within hours through USENET.
Now I am painfully aware that the nearest expertise is in Khartoum, two
hours away by plane, 24 hours by bus, or four days by train. The telephone
service is patchy, and even if I could get through to Khartoum the state
of the capital’s phone system is a bad joke. So to all intents and purposes
it is me, the computers, 12 years’ experience on other machines, and a stack
of manuals both proprietary and third party.

I have in the past four weeks rediscovered why it is an unwritten article
of faith that computer professionals do not touch manuals. They are to all
intents and purposes unreadable. Manuals for applications refer you to use
the indispensable DESQ key, or some such device. After a thorough reading
of the manual, because it isn’t mentioned in the appendix or the index,
you finally discover that this essential add-on to the IBM 101-key keyboard
is actually the Alt key.

The indexes in these things are nearly nonexistent, though you could
not tell this by looking at them. The indexes are vast, but they rarely
contain synonyms. Instead they contain keywords and phrases lifted from
the text. Since when has ‘transfer’ been the obvious command to use to read
and save files? To change the display type in DOS, you use ‘mode’, yet IBM’s
manual tells you about mode only in the index. There’s nothing under display
formats, VDUs, display adaptors, EGA, VGA. This gem of information cost
me a day’s work, and I would hardly consider it productive.

The writers of these tomes, and they all have to be tomes, seem intent
on showing you just how versatile their word processors are. Pages are up
to 50 per cent bold; formats and font sizes change seemingly at random;
and the use of hyperbole would make authors like EE ‘Doc’ Smith hide their
heads in shame. Have no lessons been learnt from the vast amount of research
that has resulted in modern educational books? Could the pieces of gee-whiz
trickery and outright witchcraft presented in some of the manuals possibly
be relegated to the appendixes? When I’m reading these things I feel I ought
to be in a castle tower with a pointed hat and a cloak covered in stars.

Please, to save me undue distress and excess baggage in the future,
and to contribute to the saving of the world’s forests, can we have books
that are clear and concise, with proper indexes and a minimum of witchcraft.
Books that do not require the reader to undertake weight-training to pick
them up. And if manufacturers insist on the manuals being 3 or 4 centimetres
thick, how about a ring binding or a hard-cover so that the spine does not
break leaving you with individual sections scattered all over the office.