Need for Digital Needs

	The Need for Digital Needs		by Pat Gratton
	Created: 10/13/2001	Modified: 10/21/2001	Version: 1.01

When a company spends millions of dollars on a software project, it begins by stating its expectations of the final product in a requirements document. Without such a document, the software vendor would lack an understanding of what it is supposed to produce for the company, and the company would lack a standard for judging the performance of the software vendor.

Yet when companies and individuals collectively spend billions of dollars on operating systems, office suites, and other forms of mass market digital technologies, no requirements document is produced. Instead, technology vendors carry out research to understand consumer needs and develop their products accordingly. Thus, it is assumed that that, even without active participation by the consumer in the requirements gathering process, the consumers’ needs will be satisfied.

Unfortunately, this assumption is not always true. Many features desired of digital technology by individual and corporate consumers are not available – and a high price is paid for their absence.
–	Open, non-proprietary standards for file formats do not exist – and their absence severely hampers the sharing and archiving of files. Instead the closed, proprietary format of Microsoft Office has become the de facto standard. Which means that consumers must either: continuously upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Office, accept the annoyance and inaccuracies of file translators, or settle for a reduced ability to share documents.
–	The absence of file standards also unreasonably limits email communications, so that consumers are forced to send email in plain text, completely foregoing the advantages of formatted text. (Note that while many systems allow mail to be sent in HTML format, the sender cannot be assured that the recipient will possess an HTML aware mail program – or if they do, that the HTML will be rendered the way that the sender intended.)
–	Competition in the marketplace for desktop operating systems and office suites has nearly disappeared. This loss leaves consumers at the mercy of a single company, a company that is clearly willing to exploit this advantage to force consumers into unwanted upgrades and undesired, expensive subscription purchase plans.
–	Consumers lack substantial control over personal information. The cost of this absence is loss of privacy, and in extreme cases, loss of employment (because of revelation of past activities or medical information) and even of personal safety (when stalkers access digital information sources to locate and profile their victims).
–	Secure internet communications are either not available or not sufficiently supported to be commonly used. This opens consumers to invasion of privacy and/or loss of hard won business information and plans.
–	Security against digital attacks is much weaker than it should be. Virus attacks costs industry hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost data and lost resources (bandwidth soaked up by DOS (Denial of Service) attacks, hours spent by employees in countering attacks or recovering damaged systems). And yet, these attacks, which have cost consumers so much, have been launched by only moderately skilled amateurs. Attacks by terrorists or foreign governments will be much more sophisticated, and much more damaging in their impact.
–	Digital publishing has yet to appear in a commercially viable implementation. As a result, consumers are restricted to the world of copyright works encased in physical artifacts – artifacts that are relatively expensive, bulky, difficult to search and access, and limited in availability.
–	Transparent integration of devices (audio and video components, telephones, answering machines and computers) has yet to appear. This absence has resulted in the loss of functionality that such integration would provide, and the duplication of components that might otherwise be shared.

So, why haven’t digital technology vendors met consumer desires in these areas? There are several reasons:
–	Passive consumer demand is shortsighted. Active consumer demand, in the form of requirements documents and vendor oversight, is more likely to consider and support long term benefits such as archiving, integration of components and security against attack.
–	Vendors are resistant to standards. Vendors maximize profits by differentiating their products from competitors’ products and by locking consumers into their product line. Conforming to standards destroys their ability to do this. (For example, IBM’s use of standard components and technologies in the design of their personal computers resulted in widespread cloning, and thus loss of their control of the PC industry.)
–	Vendors are not sufficiently motivated to meet consumers needs when the solution requires coordination across a number of digital technologies. No single company has products which span all of the digital technologies that would be required, thus development is difficult. While a company could coordinate with other companies to produce the integrated system, the cost of such an effort might outweigh the perceived benefit to the company. Moreover, integration might actually cost the company profits. For example, advanced home networking might cost consumer electronics manufacturers sales since components would not need to be duplicated in different rooms.
–	Implementation of some consumer desires will require the explicit, beforehand consent of the consumer. This is particularly true when the implementation requires a re-negotiation of the fundamental deal between vendors and consumers. For example, digital publishing will likely require that consumers give up the right to resale the purchased good. Without explicit, beforehand consent to such a change, vendor concern about consumer acceptance can be sufficient to prevent the vendor from investing in development of the solution.

Solution of these problems will require active participation by consumers in the development process.
–	Consumers will need to explicitly state their desires. This statement should take the form of a requirements document, and should be based on a consideration of desires, priorities, and the acceptability of various tradeoffs.
–	Consumers will need to act in concert to ensure that vendors meet their desires. I.e., consumers will need to use their collective purchasing power to encourage the development of products that meet their desires and to reject products that do not.
(See also Digital Consumers Unions.)

Digital Needs is a book (in progress) that seeks to inspire and assist active consumer demand for digital technologies.
–	It provides a draft statement of consumer requirements. Clearly the final statement should be the work of many people. However, it is expected that a draft statement, which delineates the problems to be solved, which integrates across digital technologies, and which considers the tradeoffs involved, will be helpful in seeding the group effort.
–	It provides a draft implementation to meet the stated requirements. The requirements statement alone fails to communicate the tradeoffs and the level of integration needed to meet the requirements, and more importantly, fails to demonstrate the possibility of meeting the requirements.
–	It provides an analysis of the transition from the current system to the proposed implementation by considering technical, commercial and legal factors and the interests of the various stakeholders. Digital Needs seeks to avoid the common mistake of technological visions – that of failing to consider the how to achieve its vision.
–	It provides mechanisms for organizing and supporting concerted consumer action. Digital Needs assumes that to be successful, a digital consumers union must be a commercially viable entity, offering a clear benefit to its members in exchange for its membership fees. Accordingly, it proposes several ways to build such entities.
(For more information on Digital Needs, see Digital Needs Overview.)