We had a meeting yesterday with the chair of the CS department, who wanted to know about our computing needs. Sadly, she just meant that she wanted to know what computing things we would like our students to be taught, because my real computing need, as I said to Kate last night, is “I need the entire computer industry to operate on a different paradigm than it does now, because the current system is making everyone miserable.”<\/p>\n
I was half joking, but not entirely. I genuinely am annoyed at the whole way the industry operates, because planned obsolescence means that I am constantly being forced to “upgrade” things that worked perfectly well, and having to re-learn things that I knew how to do before, because the latest upgrade eliminated or at least altered some function I had grown accustomed to. As a result, I’m constantly saddled with computers and computer-based devices that don’t quite do what I want them to the way I want them to, which elevates my baseline daily irritation level.<\/p>\n
The fundamental problem here is the way the computer industry operates: they make money by breaking things that used to work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
OK, not literally breaking them, though I have my suspicions about Windows Update, but the whole business model of the software industry breaks down if they make something that works well and continues to work. If you make a word processor that does everything people want a word processor to do, then you get to sell one copy per computer (in an ideal world), after which, you’re out of business. If it works, and continues working, nobody ever needs to buy another product from you.<\/p>\n
This obviously doesn’t keep software company executives supplied with the cash they need to buy sports franchises and gold-plated hot tubs, so some way has to be found to get more cash out of people who already have a working product. So you add a few features, necessary or not, and roll out a new version. Then you tweak the file format a little bit, so the formatting gets a little wonky in the older version, and roll out a new new version. Then you stop supporting the old version. Eventually, all the people you sold a copy to at the beginning of the process have to buy a new copy, because their old software, while it works just fine for what they need it to do locally, can’t quite talk to anybody else’s version.<\/p>\n
Repeat that for the spreadsheet, and the web browser, and the presentation software, and the PDF reader, and the photo editor, and on and on and on.<\/p>\n
This is a great employment program for people who design and sell computer software, but it makes the ordinary user experience a constant low-grade irritation. I shut my computer down Sunday night, and let Windows install updates. The first message I got on restarting was “Windows needs to install updates, please click here.” The computer in the classroom where I teach has been begging me to install the latest Firefox updates for a couple of weeks. Adobe wants to update something on my tablet, I’m not sure what, but it keeps popping up plaintive little dialogue boxes.<\/p>\n
None of these programs are broken in the sense of not functioning properly– they all do more or less what I want them to. Every now and then, they get a little wonky about something, but nothing too major. Whatever the upgrade is going to fix is much less irritating than the constant barrage of messages asking me to upgrade this or that.<\/p>\n
And then there are the major upgrades. I’m still not sure where to find all the features we used to use on Excel in the intro labs, thanks to the comprehensive redesign of Office a couple of years back (if I want to do anything serious, I use SigmaPlot. A copy which is probably two versions behind by now), though I’ve more or less gotten back up to speed with Word and PowerPoint. I’ve got a Palm that I use as an e-book reader, which I can no longer synch with my computer, because it doesn’t work with Vista (Kate’s still running XP, and puts stuff on it for me).<\/p>\n
I’m constantly surrounded by technology, which offers all sorts of wonderful and convenient features. None of which quite work they way I want them to, or even the way they used to a few years ago. As a result, I spend an inordinate amount of my time frustrated at the stupidity of something or another, and so do most of the people around me. Everybody starts from a baseline of mild irritation, which makes it no wonder that any discussion of serious issues turns so angry, so quickly. There’s a direct line from Bill Gates to Glenn Beck– if the normal operation of modern technology weren’t so pointlessly frustrating, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to whip people into a frenzy of rage.<\/p>\n
Sadly, I don’t have a brilliant idea for a replacement paradigm that would allow people in the software industry to continue to feed their families. I wish somebody would find one, though, because the one we have is making us all crazy.<\/p>\n
Also, get the hell off of my lawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had a meeting yesterday with the chair of the CS department, who wanted to know about our computing needs. Sadly, she just meant that she wanted to know what computing things we would like our students to be taught, because my real computing need, as I said to Kate last night, is “I need… Continue reading The Computer Industry Is Making Us Crazy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}