Here’s a scary fact: Kofi Annan, the new Secretary General of the United Nations, went to the same college I did, although his stint at Macalester preceded mine by a dozen years. Maybe he needs help managing his technology. Do you think?

At Mac in the early seventies, the grass always looked greener under the other guy’s Gro-lux. It wasn’t, of course – it smoked just the same. (I, of course, didn’t inhale, already planning my future in politics, and Mr. Annan left Mac before weed became easy to come by there.)

Based on reader responses to my debate with Nick Petreley over the Network Computer (the RL/NP NC DB), it’s clear our industry isn’t immune from greener-grass disease, either. NCs sit across the fence. They don’t exist yet, so they possess magical properties that solve every problem ever ascribed to the PC.

Reality won’t be so thrilling, of course, because Java is slow and prototype NCs run like sludge. But don’t worry: Java chips, just-in-time compilers, or some other yet-to-be-invented innovation will take care of that. Or else Digital will take Nick’s advice and reposition its Alpha chip as an NC processor to bring Java up to PC performance levels.

But I’m tired of arguing, so instead I’m going to help all you NC advocates make the system succeed in your organization. Proper migration to any new architecture requires careful planning to minimize disruption. Here’s the program:

Step 1: Migrate to all Java applications: Every NC advocate has explained that NCs won’t replace all PCs – just some of them. Since electronic document sharing will continue to be important when you add NCs, you’ll need to use the same word processors and spreadsheets on both NCs and PCs. Right now that means converting to Corel Office across the board.

This is a low-risk move anyway, so jump right in. If you compare Corel’s price and licensing, you’ll see immediate economies of between 400 and 1000% even if you change your mind about installing NCs.

Go for it.

Step 2: Inventory all departmentally developed applications and write replacements in Java: Whether you know it or not, end-users have built a bunch of small systems using tools like Access and Paradox, or even plain old Excel with some macros. Power users build them, but lots of just-plain-ordinary users rely on them every day so you have to replace them with something that will run on NCs. This shouldn’t take more than a few staff-years of effort, and it will be worth it in the long run. Especially when you figure that since the NC doesn’t have anything equivalent to Access, departments will come to you again for these small applications instead of developing them on their own.

Step 3: Convert to SMTP/POP/IMAP e-mail: Well you’re not going to be able to run cc:Mail, MS Exchange or Groupwise on an NC, are you? You need to use an e-mail system you can access through a browser, and that means using the same e-mail technology used in the Internet – not a bad idea when you get right down to it.

Step 4: Beef up your LAN with a high-speed backbone, switching hubs throughout, and high-performance network management: You’re going to need the bandwidth, since you’re going to be downloading all of your applications through the LAN, and you’ll need the network management because any network outage will have a much bigger impact than before.

Step 5: Clear out most of your Netware servers and convert them to Web servers: You could use Netware’s Intranet products, but they’re not renowned for their great TCP/IP performance, and nobody has been promoting NCs that use Novell’s IPX protocol.

Now you’re ready to install NCs around the company. And it should be worth it, so long as real NCs have the same characteristics as the slideware we’ve been basing our plans on.

What do computer viruses and science fiction have in common?

Answer: my recent columns on these two topics both generated lively Forum discussions on InfoWorld Electric. So here’s Round 2 on these subjects, based on the Forum discussions.
My column asking whether the risk of computer viruses was overstated created something of a stir in the Forums. Most participants fell into two camps: those who had dealt with viral infections (I’m wrong) and those who hadn’t (I’m right).

Among the anecdotes, two insights stood out:

Insight #1: Distributed object technologies will create a mess. Traditional computing platforms separate data and executable code, so viruses can only hide in a few, easy-to-detect locations. For the most part you’re safe if you never boot off floppies and avoid downloading executables.

Now we have objects and Objects. (The former are object-like but don’t satisfy the purist’s definition.) The MS Word macro viruses are a pernicious form of object virus, and you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. From a security perspective the startup macro is an awful feature to build into a word processor or spreadsheet. Every reader of this column should send a letter to Microsoft asking for an installation option on Microsoft Office that disables startup macros for Word and Excel.

True Objects – downloadable Java applets, ActiveX controls, CORBA-compliant code – are worse. It’s as if we had invented metabolism but not antibodies. This is a messy subject. It’s going to take a lot of exploration to fully understand. Right now, all I know for sure is that the situation has the potential to become big-time ugly.

Insight #2: Viruses aren’t that serious a threat because we view them as a serious threat. Translation: virus hype is a self-preventing prophesy.

The whole idea of self-preventing prophesies is an important one. How often have we scoffed at a prophet of doom when doom didn’t come? In the case of viruses, one reason they don’t cause all that much data loss may be because most of us, listening to the hype, have implemented prudent precautions.

Good point. I stand corrected (I think).

David Brin, who writes really good science fiction, wrote an essay describing the idea of self-preventing prophesies. Nuclear war may be one of them. In the ’50s and ’60s, plenty of authors depicted nuclear devastation and post-apocalyptic societies. Their stories strongly influenced society’s perception of nuclear war, which in turn curbed the worst tendencies of those in a position to start one.

Which brings us to reader reaction to my column on science fiction as a better, cheaper alternative to hiring an expensive futurist.

The Forum discussion on the subject was simply huge. A disproportionate number of you, like me, read a lot of science fiction, and it had a powerful influence on our later career decisions.

InfoWorld’s readers are the greatest. D. W. Miller (I infer from the e-mail address), remembered the story describing wearable computers – “Delay in Transit,” by F. L. Wallace, originally published in Galaxy back in ’54, and reprinted in an anthology called Bodyguard in 1960. The computer was implanted, not worn. Not bad for 42 years ago. Miller points out that the computer’s name, “DiManche”, accurately predicted another future technology trend – the capitalization of internal letters in product names.

Michael Croft was the first of several readers to remind me that the series introducing the “replicator” concept was collected in an anthology called The Complete Venus Equilateral, by George O. Smith, published in the 1940s. Think about this: 50 years ago, a science fiction writer discussed the creation of a service economy out of the ruins of one based on manufacturing.

Charles Van Doren has pointed out that post-renaissance society is the first in the history to embrace the concept of progress – that the world can improve. Many of us, having grown up on science fiction, embrace that idea (which, of course, is why we always buy the next software release).

Every silver lining has a cloud inside it.