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Musings Report #50 12-12-15 More On Finicky Technology
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
More On Finicky Technology
I received a number of interesting comments on finicky technology from Musings readers, and am reprinting four here:
Chad W.:
This is one I know the answer to. I've been on the cutting, sometimes bleeding, edge of the programming and tech for the past 15-going-on-20 years.
Short answer: Because most programmers and organizations don't know how to manage increasing complexity (e.g. Skype across many diverse platforms) without sucking and introducing regressions in every release.
My company uses agile and Extreme Programming methodologies to manage this complexity. We're incredibly disciplined in our methodologies and culture, some of the best in the world, and our goal is to share that and Transform the Way The World Builds Software. Because software is eating the world, and if you aren't good at it, you will die in the market sooner or later.
That's not empty boasts, we have taught hundreds of others to do the same, from startups (we saved one high-profile social media start-up from falling over back in 2008 or so when they first blew up in popularity and couldn't handle the load) to Fortune 500 companies (engaging with us in multi-million dollar deals to teach them exactly how to do what we do).
And, we're developing our own Platform-as-a-service product, CloudFoundry, with these methods, and it is itself an incredibly complex piece of software, but manageable because of our discipline.
Doing this is very hard, it take extreme discipline, communication, transparency, intelligence, and empathy, ALL THE WAY FROM THE TOPMOST LEADERSHIP.
Most organizations are unable to work in this way, due to ossification, politics, ratchet effect, all the things you have talked about for years.
But the ones that can transform in a sustainable way succeed, win in the market, and don't put out buggy software ;)
Eric A.:
RE: the finicky tech, it is those things, but something far more: it represents our society eliminating consequences for failure, suspending cause and effect. So no matter how badly, how often, how egregiously, how universally, how publicly you screw up, nothing happens.
I see this all the time at work. Create a million-dollar project that is totally expensive and irrelevant, that the users will reject? Then screw up the execution of that project, doubling the time, cost, and scope? No problem, here's another project, and if someone leaves in front of the line, a promotion too. Point out cautions, problems, limitations, difficulties of the project or its execution? Banned from meetings. Hey! We don't need no tech people here telling us why our tech project can't be done the way we say! Srsly. We already promised some feature that isn't possible and we knew nothing about, you'll cause me minor embarrassment. We're all one team here.
Without feedback, restraint of reality, cause and effect, projects and expenses rise infinitely. The only restraint is the social habit of Americans for doing things practically and well, which every year simply becomes more eroded. Add to this, that saying bad things isn't being 'nice' --even if things are actually bad--and you've got a situation where no matter how terribly, irrelevant, or screwed up things get, no one remarks on it, and no one cares.
The reason for this will becomes more clear when I name the opposite: There are also no rewards for success. Since all rewards are tied up in fiefdoms and backbacks, in clubs of "our people", be they your clique, your department, your protected industry, or your social class, it no longer matters down where wheels turn if you build a better mousetrap or break one: either way, you get nothing. You could save the company millions and not only not be rewarded, but from the toes stepped on, probably be fired. You could cost the company millions, but since no one's going to point it out or say anything, it won't matter. You, as a wage-serf, are now tied to your social class which can neither rise nor fall--or at least not as a consequence of cause-and-effect.
This is how the United States has now become like Romania, with long lines, poor choice, no options, and increasing poverty and ever-slowing economy, and for the same reasons: socialism. That is, from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need. So the same thing happened here as there: no matter how hard you work, you get the same results, so everyone works less.
As everyone works less, less is accomplished and poverty increases from lack of work, lack of innovation, lack of motivation. Risk takers are punished and floaters are rewarded. As the economy dies, the only channels to success become government, which increases inequality as it favors its friends and not the hard working or innovative.
To create even more automatic offense, I can point out that this is exactly as predicted by Ayn Rand in "Atlas Shrugged," 1956, right down to the forest reclaiming a collapsed Detroit. But really, it's not rocket science. If there are no consequences for failure, (because it would be "mean", as a part of political correctness) then you will automatically get effects, products, problems, solutions, now entirely unrelated to causes or stated intent. It's only logical. What if you were a cook that couldn't taste your food, or a painter who couldn't see his work? Without feedback, nothing will work. And the feedback in a economic-work system is both money and termination. But we have both no wages and no bankruptcy, something to think about next time you wrestle with products that don't work.
The Archdruid has a solution to this: stop using technology. Or more exactly, use only the level of technology that you enjoy and accomplishes the task. And for most of us, that's a lot, lot less.
What did Thoreau say? It was quicker to walk to Boston than to work days for the money and take the train? Same thing here. Less "time saving" tech will probably increase your productivity as you don't have to buy it, research it, repair, or update it.
Walter S.:
I share your sentiments entirely. In 1989 I completed a Master's thesis entitled "The Corporate Uses of Information Technology." While much of it is definitely dated, some is not. F'rinstance, the paperless office remains elusive, although we've made a lot of progress towards it. Back then and for the next 10 years I was the IT manager in a small government research bureau, and for most of time I was able to keep up with developments in both hardware and software. However, towards the end of the 10 years I had changed from an attitude of "Oh good! Something new!" to "Oh no! Something new." Then I burned out completely and couldn't look a computer in the monitor for a whole year.
Even after the end of IT (now ITC) as a source of a salary, it is still quite clear that the complexity of technology never ceases to grow. I reckon we're close to if not right at Peak Complexity. My Master's supervisor was adamant that IT, even in the comparatively simple early 1990s, was a bad technology in that it threw far too much responsibility for its care and maintenance onto the user. A good technology, he insisted, is one like the radio: it might not be the simplest thing in the world to manufacture, but once that's done, it's simple to operate and easy to maintain. Any grannie can do it. Not any more.
Like you, I find myself trying and increasingly failing to cope with the growing complexities and convolutions of the hardware and especially the wretched software. Like you I really do find myself cursing pointless changes and bungled "improvements," too many of which add nothing to functionality or ease of use.
I belong to a computer club and the members help each other a great deal. They're great. One of them is closely involved with Microsoft, and he strongly criticises the "kiddies from Redmond" whose minds work in mysterious ways and who put too little thought into what they produce, sometimes almost randomly omitting powerful old capabilites from new releases for no readily apparent reason. We say exactly the same about Apple, whose 18-y.o. "kiddies from Cupertino" seem never to consider what real people need from and do with their software. So much of the "development" seems to be all about chasing some steadily receding goal, to attain which we must constantly change and change.
I am a Mac user (yes, a Mac Maniac, not a PC Clone) and the OS dates from 2011. Only 4 years old and yet the industry regards it as dating from the dinosaurs. I should upgrade, they insist. I've tried and it's an utter nightmare and far from complete.
Severe upgrade fatigue set in with me years ago. The corporations have been able to shift the costs of support onto the Internet and the people, just as they do with every other externality. I am glad of the Internet, it is really helpful, but I shouldn't need it. The hours and hours I spend searching for solutions to problems is just a total waste.
The UK and Australian military have the splendid term "embuggerance," which means any obstacle (natural or artificial) that gets in the way of progress. I begin to think that the entire IT world is one huge embuggerance.
Oh, and another thing: are you like me disappearing under a blizzard of passwords and user IDs and security questions and every time you go near some website it wants you to register and set up yet another account with yet another password and they're all got to be written in fluent gibberish for the management of which you need yet another app with its own set of security paraphernalia and do you opt for automatic payment of renewals or do you prefer to be told when their hands are out for money so you get another email on top of the zillions already flooding in and you've still got hundreds waiting unread in the inbox and some idiot wants you to believe that you've been left a vaaaast amount of money in some ghaaaastly part of the world you've never even heard of but somehow you have a close family connection with this place and then the government announces that it wants to push everybody and everything onto the Internet and too bad for the collaterally-damaged grannies who grew up when radio was in its
infancy and they don't see why they need a computer ever and then the telephone people announce they're going to shut down the 2G network so too bad for all you punters out there with perfectly well-functioning cell phones which you'll now have to pay to upgrade and use and carry with you absolutely everywhere as they're fast becoming the ID card and credit card and internal passport all in one and soon you won't be able to buy or sell unless you're carrying this here gadget and now you can be tracked and watched by government snoops and corporate predators and maneuvered into buying things you never knew you desired...
Bob Z.:
My view is that the reason technology has become so finicky is twofold.
One big reason is security flaws. I think code naturally becomes more complicated and bloated as security measures are added and security leaks are plugged.
The second big reason has to do with the product life cycle, which I'm sure you know is a concept taught in marketing courses. If you look at a typical product life cycle graph, you notice that in the beginning, improvements to the product are significant. At some point, changes become marginal, and as a product matures, successive changes to the product make the product worse rather than better.
A great example of this is Windows XP, which was an exceptionally good product after the release of Service Pack 2. The next iteration, Windows Vista, was a total disaster. Windows 7 restored most of the usefulness of XP, Windows 8 was beyond disastrous, while 8.1 merely made Windows 8 less disastrous. I suppose the jury is still out on Windows 10, but I suspect Windows 10 is about selling apps through the Microsoft Store more than anything else.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
The Flaws in Basic Income for Everyone 12/11/15
The Death-Spiral of American Entrepreneurism 12/10/15
The "American Dream" is Over--and Voters Know It 12/9/15
The Fallacy that Weakening Your Currency Generates Prosperity 12/8/15
Is the Fed Finally Being Forced to Consider Main Street? 12/7/15
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
A major Chinese publisher approached me about issuing a Chinese-language edition of my new book.
Market Musings: Oil and the Gold-Oil Ratio
The news is now full of stories suggesting oil's free-fall has a long way to go--from its current price around $35/barrel to $20/brl.
Demand is stagnating while supply keeps rising: the world is awash in oil.
Oil may yet fall to $25/brl, but there are signs that it might bounce here from $35--or perhaps $35 is the bottom, despite the oversupply of oil.
Here's the daily chart of WTIC/oil. Note the bullish descending wedge.
Here's the weekly chart: a long-term descending wedge is visible here, too, along with positive divergence in MACD.
One way to assess if an important commodity is at an extreme is to compare its price with the price of gold and oil. Over the long-term, these ratios tend to revert to the mean.
Consider this chart of the gold-oil ratio: it is now pushing 30, which means one ounce of gold buys 30 barrels of oil.
You can see that typically the ratio is between 10 and 15. When oil was almost $150/brl and gold was around $750, the ratio sank to 5--an extreme at the other end of the scale.
What would it take for the ratio to return to 15? Either oil must rise or gold must drop. I don't see gold declining much--rather, I see it as having bottomed and on a long-term rise.
If gold doesn't drop drastically, the only way the ratio can resume its historical average is for oil to rise back to $60/brl or more.
Right now that is considered "impossible," but let's keep an eye on long-term charts--and sentiment. When "everyone" believes oil can only keep falling, a reversal become likely.
From Left Field
How to destroy an American family The Straters’ lives have been devastated by relentless cyberattacks. And there’s nothing they can do about it.
Xi’s China: The Illusion of Change
How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce -- must maintain productivity--
Chinese Cash Floods U.S. Real Estate Market -- nice coverage of a trend that is now weakening...
Mark Zuckerberg Will Donate Massive Fortune to Own Blinkered Worldview -- it's all about the freedom of the LLC structure...
Cutting the Cord, Not the Cost -- customers abandoning cable... if you save $99 annually on shipping with Amazon Prime, whatever you find to watch for free is well, free...
Addicted to Distraction -- no surprises here, but this phenomenon is still under-appreciated...
Why So Many Minority Millennials Can't Get Ahead (via Joel M.)
As Lives Lengthen, Costs Mount Some elderly New Yorkers receive too much income to be eligible for assistance, but not enough to pay for the services they need. (via Joel M.) -- huge gap group: too well-off for benefits, too poor to buy services at market rates....
Beijing’s smog off the scale but still no sign of top red alert (via John D.) -- despite claims to the contrary, China's pollution is still off the scale...trillions will have to be invested to make a dent...
China Arrests at Least 3 Workers’ Rights Leaders Amid Rising Unrest -- media claims labor is in shortage--as China slumps into recession, labor is restive...
IEA Offers No Hope For An Oil-Price Recovery -- this is now received wisdom...
"There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare." Sun Tzu
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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