I, Laurence Hansen, being of sound mind, am embarking on my very first web log. I believe that may be a contradiction – “sound mind” and “web log” — but I am starting one nonetheless. After “upgrading” my technology in early January, 2009, with a new BlackBerry Bold 9000, AT&T 3G mobile network, Dell Latitude E6500 with Microsoft Windows Vista Professional and all the attendant software and peripheral hardware upgrades to reestablish a productive work environment, I am compelled to express my dissatisfaction with the whole process and the current state of affairs.
Before I continue, though, here is an important note:
This web log is not me! It does not truly and accurately reflect who I am. Like Dr. Henry Jekyll who turned into the evil Mr. Hyde when influenced by the wrong “medicine”, I am capable of becoming very angry, hateful, spiteful and ugly when influenced by too much of today’s computers, software, “technical support” and technology culture. This is my outlet for much of that anger.
In reality, though, I doubt that I will ever bring myself to publicly express the most vile, despicable, crude and violent visions that, from time to time, torment me while under the influence of Stupid Computer Tricks.
What is a Stupid Computer Trick? For this post, let me give just one example. In the process of writing this post, I was just getting warmed up and in the mood for some good writing. I had just completed a couple of good paragraphs about what constitutes a Stupid Computer Trick. The WordPress editor window was dutifully “auto saving” a draft periodically. I was just about ready to put this puppy to bed so I decided to try out the spell check function. In the process of ignoring a “misspelling” that was not misspelled, IE locked up. I had to use Task Manager to terminate IE. When I got back into WordPress, the currently available version of this post was completely devoid of all the writing I had done about what constitutes a Stupid Computer Trick. I was notified that “there is an autosave of this page that is more recent than the version below.” Hallelujah, I thought. I’d just click on the “View the autosave” link to find and recover the right version. No such luck. Nothing that was available in the Post Revisions section of WordPress had the best work I had done immediately prior to the spell check fiasco. Now that’s a STUPID COMPUTER TRICK. I do not have time now to recreate what was lost.
Oh, heck. Let me give you just one more example of a stupid computer trick. Blog. The word “blog” is a stupid computer trick. I don’t know how to describe the culture that must exist in the laboratory where the word was coined or in the minds of early adopters who accepted it as a good idea. Not every Stupid Computer Trick is a technological failure, bug or blunder. A Stupid Computer Trick can be the result of technology people getting a little too full of themselves and busting out a new word that is just plain ugly but sticks in the culture that created it and grows around it. The word “blog” is really just another Stupid Computer Trick.
Perhaps in my next post I’ll have the time and energy to recreate my description of what constitutes a Stupid Computer Trick. Maybe not.
There is a lot to cover in this web log but my main premise is that computer hardware, computer software and technical support services are in a sorry state. As a business person, I depend on computers to achieve maximum efficiency at minimum cost. In nearly 40 years of working with computers, most of which was invested in creating business software applications for companies large and small, I have developed high expectations for what computers can and should be able to do for individual and organizational effectiveness.
I have also become extremely skeptical and cynical about it all. I am coming to believe that good business application software, dedicated to helping individuals become maximally effective in their work, is an impossible dream. Evolution of the profit motive in software development and attendant corporate and market structures have made it impossible to create the kinds outstanding business applications that I envision.
I hope I am wrong. I don’t think I am. Only time will tell.
