In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Pirsig's main character describes his intellectual quest to unite classic and romantic thinking. His argument comes down to an elusive characteristic he calls Quality. He explains that Quality exists outside of subjects and objects and, in fact, is the event that creates both mind and matter. This Quality can also be perceived. He spends much of the book working up to this definition, so I cannot do it justice here. However, to simplify things, Quality can be thought of as the degree of excellence an object is perceived to have (the typical meaning).

After defining Quality, Pirsig goes on to analyze why many people have issues with technology (from our daily frustrations with our gadgets to outright revulsion and rejection of modern technology). He writes:

Thus, if the problem of technological hopelessness is caused by absence of care, both by technologists and anti-technologists; and if care and Quality are external and internal aspects of the same thing, then it follows logically that what really causes technological hopelessness is absence of the perception of Quality in technology by both technologists and anti-technologists.

He later speaks about how technology today is supplemented by a layer of "style" in an attempt to disguise the lack of quality.

I think he's bang on in his analysis and you can see it today in lots of software. There are some software programs that are a joy to use. They look great, they're functional, easy to use, and just feel right. A couple examples include iTunes on the Mac and Picasa on Windows. The opposite is true of many more packages. Applications like SAP, Microsoft Office, and others are all pure function with pretty icons. They aren't a pleasure to use, but we tolerate them because we're forced to.

How do we create these elegant programs? That will be the subject of another post. I need to think on it.