Chain Smoking Blue Monkey

I have been trying it all lately. And by “all” I mean just about any kind of application or service that comes to light online that looks like it might do something I want it to do for me. Some work and some don’t. Some work sometimes and other times not. Some don’t work at all, and those, of course, are the ones I know least about since if they don’t work it becomes immediately apparent and I simply stop using them.

There are dozens if not hundreds of great things out there, too. Sites like Lifehacker chronicle this stuff every day and link to so many things that it is ultimately impossible to actually try them all in any effective or efficient manner. Still, every now and then I will try one that looks like it might work for me. Since Lifehacker focuses so squarely on productivity and time saving apps, there is an interesting irony that permeates a site like that. You can only try so many things, after all, before you have diluted your own data pool to the point of it being unusable.

I love reading about those applications, though. The csbmonkey likes the idea of total control over all of his life’s data. I love to believe in knowing and responding in the most effective ways possible. I love believing that the computer is the technology tool that can work in beautiful concert with all other sticks and baubles that store data. It’s fun to pretend. It’s fun to implement if you can. Ultimately you want the pretending to be reality and for the fantasy of smoothly flowing data between servers, computers, PDAs and phones to all work like a sober, tight rock band on stage or a well rehearsed symphony performance. We rarely get that, though.

What DO we get? Chaos. Misery. Anger. Confusion. We get a bunch of 15 year old kids in the basement with their guitars they’ve practiced for a month and decided to form a heavy metal band. We get a volunteer philharmonic orchestra that only practices their pieces twice before performance. We don’t get harmony and joy and beauty. We DO get noise and out of tune loud and unbearable things that we want to run away from.

Yet, somehow people DO find ways to get things well practiced enough to get music instead of noise. How do they do it? The same way that bands and orchestras get great: they practice.

Just downloading that app and installing it won’t make it work for you. DOING things with the app, regularly, finding its flaws and working around them, finding its strengths and exploiting them. THAT is how people make things work for them. There is no magic in the machine that will make how you deal with your personal data mystically all start working as per your fantasy of your brain simply organizing itself without any effort from you.

In the day to day “Have you restarted it?” life of a CSBmonkey, there are a few constants, and one of those is the inevitable crashing of these application thingies.  They crash like drunken teenagers on prom night heading home at 5 am in mom’s mini van.  Often, the results are the same.  Split skulls from the impact, brains hanging out and spread across the pavement.  The anguish and the misery that follows a crash is inevitable.  That was important stuff involved in the crash… the graduating high school student and the yearly budget someone forgot to ctrl-s after working on it for 12 hours.  The prom night crash is obvious, though.  Booze.  A little toke after that.  Some grinding and slurping late into the night (what teenager isn’t going to stay awake for that after all?).  The avoidance of teenage high school shooters and slashers (bringing up the question of exactly why we haven’t seen any prom night shootings… I didn’t say it was gonna be a pleasant question).  I mean, it takes everything a 17 year old can muster to get through that night, but computers… well, they’re basically infants and yet we put such high expectations upon them.  “Don’t crash honey, this budget analysis is due tomorrow… oh, nah, we don’t need any protection!  It’s more fun without me sheathing myself with a ctrl-s.  I mean, doesn’t it feel good?”

There are reasons that those application thingies crash.  Good reasons.  Let’s look at one of the most frequently used applications by our friends in the Pacific Northwest, Word.  Here are the various reasons this CSBmonkey has experienced crashes in that most venerable of applications:

*Corrupted normal.dot file
*Corrupted MS Word prefs
*Damaged application
*Damaged word document
*Attempting to access a very large document across an unstable network and the connection being lost
*Sun spots
*Solar flares
*Magnetic fields too close to the computer in the permanent location
*Computer hates being used: a.k.a. the “I’ll show YOU!” syndrome
*Client has failed to meet the computer or the application’s emotional needs
*Screwed up auto-save feature not working properly (probably due to sun spots)
*Auto-Tracking of changes on in those apps (Did you REALLY want to track those changes?  Probably not.  Way to go.)
*Documents were read only and yet let you keep adding stuff to them.  That was funny, wasn’t it?
*Computer has the dumb.
*Infestation of gremlins
*Possession by one or more demonic elements
*Infestation of regular gremlins that don’t know what to do with data
*Karma: computer, client, company client works for, etc. up to no good or was up to no good in the past and now coming back to haunt everyone via the “freeze up Word” method (more common than you think)
*Internet Explorer 7 whacked the crap out of the Office install, and now it’s been uninstalled.  Praise be!  Everything will work fine after this.
*Small, microscopic black hole nexus point at the location where computer freezes up regularly and causing atoms in device to not react in a normal and predictable way
*Similar to microscopic black holes, there could be weird gravity at the location that causes atomic corruption on various levels.  IF ONLY WE COULD REVERSE THE POLARITY WE COULD DETERMINE IF GRAVITY ISSUES ARE AT WORK!

You can see that the reasons are varied, and many.  Your ethics and morals and status as a decent human being weigh heavily in wether or not your computer works properly.  Don’t think Word isn’t watching you.  Don’t think that Excel doesn’t lurk under your bed at night reading your thoughts about the babysitter (or the baby sitter’s brother).  Purity of thought.  Or essence, these are the things that keep a computer running properly.  That and a good tech.

This is not about technology. This is about people. Two people that stood behind me and said of a fun idea “But it’s really stupid.”

I’m here to tell you, folks, the idea was useless, but it was not stupid. I suppose, to old men, which they were, and by old I mean they were perhaps 10 years older than me (any many pounds heavier… wait, is that prejudice? Yes? Damn. Ok, they were fat old men. How’s that?). What was this stupid thing? It was something called Hullabaloo. It was essentially interactive technological art. Useless it was. Interesting it was. Fun it was. Stupid? That wasn’t my first thought. The technology was simple, but the idea behind was quite sophisticated and without the explanation on hand for it, difficult to discern without knowledge and participation and thought. The idea tapped into a fundamental human desire: uniqueness.

You can read about what Hullabaloo does on the page, and see it there, but I will briefly describe it. It is a box with a receive inside it (a phone, I believe) with two plastic wiring conduits running out of it. One goes to an AC power outlet. The other stretches upward to a speaker. Inside the box the bluetooth receiver is connected to another device that generates a unique audio signature similar to a birdcall based on your bluetooth ID (you have to discover the device and join to it briefly). When you wander back by, it knows who you are and plays your unique call.

I am not sure why the gentlemen, sorry, the old fat white guys, thought it was stupid. It was thoughtful and new. It was a concept that someone thought would fun and then they did it. Indeed, much that one person finds fun others find boring, or even stupid. I could not help but think of another story.

There seems to be a tradition going on. The tradition is that technology provides us with amazing wonders and contemptible tragedies. The tradition of useful, clever, smart inventions that have great use… great practical use. And the tradition of technology that results in ruin, destitution, and nothing worthwhile. Those are the blacks and whites of technology. The two sides. The lustrous and wonderful blacks and the blinding and sterile whites.

Oh dear sir, the grays. The in between things. The… stupid technologies. Of what use are these technologies? Certainly they will remain as they are. They will remain stupid. It almost goes without saying that they are useless technologies. Useful technologies are NEVER stupid! Not the steam engine. Not the roller washing machine! These are practical, useful technologies that I am sure will never be surpassed or thought of as stupid. Certainly not thought of as stupid at the time they were invented. I for one am enjoying our era of steam engine airplanes and computer controller roller washing machines that I must stand next to and attend.

The Hullabaloo has no use beyond it’s novelty. Except to light up the minds of simple minded folks like myself. Smart, sophisticated fat white guys know better. They know it’s stupid. A useless contrivance. Like so, so many other technologies.

Computers bring out weird instincts.  One of the instincts, oddly enough, is a noble one.  To learn.  To know more than is currently known.  To know how to DO something.  Learning is hard.  I admit that I am impressed when someone expresses an interest in learning more.  Unfortunately, reality is a harsh mistress, and most everyone learns enough to scrap by when it falls outside of what they already know and have grounded themselves in.  Harder still is the deep desire to learn and then move forward with that knowledge.  There’s a wrinkle there.  A smile line.  A crack in the surface.  I try to  hold back, but I cannot.

Whatever you learn today will be obsolete in two years and useless in four.

It is discouraging.  The first step, though, is to admit defeat.  You can’t win this battle.  You can’t know enough today to use new technology tomorrow.  Because this battle isn’t about technology.  It isn’t against technology.  It is about you.  It is against yourself.  It is battle of time and ideas.  Your own ideas wanting to stay static and other people’s ideas wanting to move forward.

I know, I know… it seems like such a good idea to take a class.  To go learn something new.  To spend some time. Some money.  To invest in yourself.  It work in college, didn’t it? In grad school.  The post doc. That all worked… didn’t it? (DIDN’T IT!? OH GOD! SURELY IT WORKED! MY LIFE ISN’T A LIE ALREADY, IS IT?)  The idea is so good.  To learn something new.

There’s an important part of learning something new.  Something we forget to do, which is rather ironic.  We forget to forget.  Don’t forget this: you need to forget what you already know.  What you know now may be useful now.  And tomorrow.  And a little bit after that.  Not forever.  Not even a while.  A while.  What you know now may may not be useful in a short while.  How frustrating.  How daunting.  How… humiliating.

It’s ok, though.  You will make it.  Now you know this.  You still want to learn the new thing I bet.  Frankly, you’re going to have to learn it.  So go ahead and do it.  Learn that thing you need to know.  It’s fine.  Oh, uh, remember this before you go in to learn it though: Don’t overlearn it.  It isn’t gospel.  It isn’t truth.  It’s just, you know, now.  It’s what you need to know to get by.

Technology is a fickle.  It changes a lot and it changes often.  We desperately, desperately want to learn the technology and use it and move forward and then succeed.  We want to learn that thing and go forward.  And once learned, it stays learned, yes?  Surely we all have enough knowledge to get by.  To succeed.  How fast we forget.  We forget that once we listened to albums.  To records.  1/2 at a time.  1/2 from start to finish and then flip the record.  The record!  Yes, then flip the record and complete it all.  We forget that we used to type dir to know what was there.  We forget FF/REW/PLAY used to take some time.  We slowly forget.  We slowly forget when we should quickly forget.  We passively forget when we should actively forget.  Forget the white elephant.  Please.  Just forget it.  FORGET IT!  PLEASE STOP WHAT YOU KNOW NOW!

Admit it.  We are packrats, the whole lot of us.  We are information packrats, sure.  Backups and archives galore.  How far back does YOUR email go?  But we are also knowledge packrats.  Learning packrats.  Skills packrats.  It is so, so hard to determine ahead of time what we will send to the rubbish bin.  What if we NEED that knowledge?!  What if we need that skill?  Forgetting is so hard.  Throwing things out is so hard.

I have supported technological devices for a few years. I have also played with them and been entertained by them all my life. I have also feared them. That probably sounds odd coming from someone who makes their living supporting technological devices. There are a lot of technological devices in the world we have made for ourselves, and frankly I don’t pretend to know much about them all. There are just too many. Too many gadgets. Too much software. Too many ideas and too many ways of thinking. It is impossible for me to know them all or know about them all or to learn very much about them all.

The one technology I support right now has a lot of focus from the world: computers. There is an incredible amount of focus on computers right now because of how much of time, money and effort are being put into computing technologies. This mostly has to do with the web and it’s many grasping fingers that have gotten into our collective psychological pies. Computers have creeped up on us over the past several years as being a primary technology. A technology that many people’s entire lives now depend upon.

When our lives depending upon something we expect that something to “function properly”. In other words, we expect that thing that we depend upon to simply “work”. Let me distill this down to the language that people use. The computer has to work right. Let that phrase in particular linger with you.

The computer has to work right.

That phrase alone should give you pause. It should make you think. The obvious question should come up. Does it? “What is ‘work right’?”

As modern beliefs go, this one is in the family of some ancient beliefs like “What is good?” That may certainly sound pretentious, but if you are someone who isn’t steeped in technology every day, ask yourself what you think your computer “working right” means.

“You know, it should work like it’s supposed to.” An answer as informative as the question. It can’t be ignored, the question that this brings up: “And how is the computer supposed to work?” You start to see a pattern. Certainly a computer is supposed to start up and “work” in some predefined way. That’s the entire point, isn’t it? That the computer will make your life easier? I don’t know. Is that the point? Is that how you define that the computer is “working right”? The computer is indeed supposed to make certain aspects of your life easier. Written communication is easier in that it is instantaneous. (Wait. Did we really want that?) Mathematical calculations of great scale and complexity are easier. (Indeed, this is probably one that we did want. To start with. Not everything is going to benefit from adding complexity.) Being informed and knowledgeable is faster and easier than it has ever been, right? (Ok, a few hoops to get through, sure, but ultimately I can read journal articles and newspapers at home from the couch. That’s progress over me driving to the library and rooting through the stacks, right?)

Is the problem clear yet? Yes or no? Can you define how your computer is “supposed to work”? Can you sufficiently elucidate what that means to you? Or is it like a car? You know it’s supposed to get you from point A to point B, and in between it should “just work”. You know how it’s supposed to work, but you can’t define it. Is it like you’re body? You know mostly when you don’t feel good and you can vaguely approximate the area that doesn’t feel good. Ah, but your car and your body require more than just using them to make sure they work regularly, right? A computer, though. A computer shouldn’t require that, should it? It’s just a box that does some stuff than isn’t that demanding. It’s not a body keeping itself alive. It’s not a car, requiring gasoline every so many miles and oil changes and new tires every so often. Computers certainly aren’t like children or pets, requiring regular attention to keep them alive and healthy. Computer are just… computers. Machines, sort of. Like a washing machine. Or a dryer. Or maybe a phone. None of those things need very much maintenance, do they? Shouldn’t a computer just work? When I sit down to the computer, it should work. It should grant my request to look at the world wide web. It should grant me request to view electronic messages. Shouldn’t it grant my request to play music now? Or how about do some complicated mathematics? (I mean, wasn’t it designed to do that to begin with?) And I’ve heard it can talk to other computers in my house. Why can’t it just do that?

Why can’t it just do that? Why can’t it just work? It’s supposed to work.