“As the capacity of computer hardware increases, the software becomes more bloated.”

– Bryce’s Law

INTRODUCTION

Ever wonder why our computers typically don’t last more than three years? Many claim it is due to the rapid pace of technological advances. Maybe. But I tend to believe that there is something more than that, namely “Parkinson’s Law”. For those of you who have forgotten, “Parkinson’s Law” was devised by C. Northcote Parkinson, a noted British historian and author. The original book of him, “Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress”, It was introduced in 1958 and was a best-selling management book for several years (it is still sold today). The book was based on his experience with the British Civil Service. Among his key observations was that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Basically, it suggests that people do work to rationalize their employment. Consequently, managers create bureaucracies and redundant work to justify their existence, not because they are really needed.

Besides, CEOs clearly understood Parkinson’s Law, which became the driving force behind the flattening of corporations in the 1990s, such as General Electric under the reign of Jack Welch.

APPLIED TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Whereas Parkinson was primarily concerned with people, his law is equally applicable to machines, particularly computers; For example, Parkinson’s Law can be applied to computation in terms of “Data expands to fill the space available for storage.” Years ago I had a Compaq Presario computer with 50mb of disk space, which I considered considerable at the time. I never dreamed that he would be able to fill the hard drive. But of course I did (as have other PCs I’ve owned over the years). My current PC has a hard drive with a capacity of 224gb and although I am a long way from filling it, I inevitably know that I will for two reasons: I now feel more comfortable downloading large media files (MP3, AVI, WMV, etc.), PDF files, database files, and other larger file formats, and; Second, because the developers have become careless in programming.

Back when memory and disk space were at a premium, there was great concern about efficient use of computing resources. The program code was written very precisely and the file size was taken into account. For example, setting a simple file index was carefully considered. But as computer power grew and hardware prices fell, developers became less interested in efficient programming. To illustrate, not too long ago, packaged software installation programs were delivered on 3.5″ floppy disks. Today, it is not uncommon to use multiple CDs to install the same products. This means that as capacity increases of computer hardware, software becomes more bloated, but an example of Parkinson’s Law applied to computing.

For another example, consider data transmission lines as used in networks. It doesn’t seem like long ago we were using 14.4 baud modems on phone lines. I remember when we doubled the speed to 28.8 and then to 56.4. It seemed like the sky was the limit with each increase. But eventually performance seemed to slow to a crawl. Was it because the technology was getting old or because our web pages were getting bigger and more complicated and required a greater volume of data over the lines? Frankly, it was the latter. Today, DSL and cable are commonplace in both homes and businesses, and “dial-up” is fast becoming a thing of the past. But as the volume of data increases with the number of subscribers, will we ever hit a wall in terms of capacity with DSL and cable? Undoubtedly. Again, more due to Parkinson’s Law than anything else.

Make no mistake, computer hardware and software vendors are well aware of the role of Parkinson’s Law. It’s what allows them to incorporate planned obsolescence into their products. As consumers reach capacity, they may add additional capacity or, more likely, purchase new computers.

Undoubtedly, there is an incestuous relationship between hardware and software vendors. Hardware upgrades are implemented primarily to increase capacity to overcome software inefficiencies, and software vendors make their products more bloated as hardware upgrades are introduced. To illustrate the point, is it a coincidence that every major version of Windows requires additional hardware support? Hardly. This is done more by design than by accident.

CONCLUSION

Parkinson’s Law is as much a part of computer technology as it is in the business world. But what if we decided to “flatten” computing technology in the same way that Jack Welch flattened GE? Keep in mind that Welch did this to cut red tape and force his workers to be more efficient and focus on the real problems at hand. By flattening the “bloatware” we would probably get a lot more performance out of our computers. But I guess that wouldn’t be good for selling computers (or the economy).

I guess Parkinson’s Law and the viscous cycle of computing will be with us for quite some time.