Those marketing campaigns where they have the magic of technology being easy (daggers at Apple in my eyes) are filthy lies.
They are also dangerous because they teach a lie as if it were truth: Complex things are easy!
Bullshit.
Complex things are complex, and the more complex they are, the easier they are to break. No, computers are not easy to use – any illusion that they are, whether it be an iPod wheel or a flashy GUI or a yellow smiley face are illusions in the true sense: it seems easy, so everybody can use it!
More like everyone can pay some company money for the illusion of an easy-to-use interface for a complex system.
This philosophy is dangerous because it creates a world of ease that masks reality: be it automatic transmission, a computer OS GUI, An investment strategy, pre-prepared food products, what have you. If you simplify a system, you run the danger of having that simplification BE the system for you and you forget (or never knew) that it was a simplification of something more complex.
What we make collectively as a group from these simplifications (more people on the internet, productivity “improvements”, self-empowerment) comes at too-great a price for our collective knowledge and perception of reality.
The Machine* is the devil:
We want things easy. The world isn’t easy, it is complex. Systems designed to make hard things easy are (even if they ‘work’) inherently filled with a spiritual lie. That masked complexity doesn’t just dissapear – it lives in the shadows like a debt that will need to be repaid, like a worn-out photocopy.
Stop trying to live easier, live deliberately.
It is never a problem with your machines or technology when they break or ‘go bad’ or malfunction. It is a problem with you.
—
* A device (mechanical, systematic, model, etc) that attempts to make a difficult task easy, or replace man-hours of ‘work’ with automation, simplification, etc.
Mebbe that’s why I’ve been so cranky lately. I understand the complexity and expect nothing more or less than so and many, many, many more people do not get it.
True indeed. The model of reality is not real; It is a model.
I think it is funny that people think this labor saving device is reality. I know how to drive my car, but I am cognizant that there are really complex interactions going on inside that I don’t really understand. But I can be a good user without understanding that, just as you can be a fine computer user without understanding the whys. But you have to realize that the whys exists.
I think as a culture (mostly North America here, and the Canadians are even a little off the hook) we are so overwhelmed with what we think we “need” to do that our only choice to do more is to try and simplify. Except, as you note (and as I daily witness!) it is an illusion that cannot withstand any breakdowns.
This oddly reminds of the issue of birth control. How it is easier to create bc for women, since they have a complex system (hormones, etc) and it is easier to tweak, whereas men are such a simple system it is harder to make tweaks.
Of all your recent philosophical posts, this one resonates most with me. I think it permeates all levels of our culture. A semi-good example would be what happened after Katrina last year. Everyone expected the thing to resolve itself without doing anything about it. The government would “magically” fix everything, because that is what people seem to think can happen. The infrastructure that gives us our comfy lives is very complicated and fragile, but that is a complete unknown to most people.
Good point you made, Craig…
I realized awhile back that one of the perks of not having a job is that you can’t easily afford a car. Since you don’t have a job you really don’t need one. Sometimes in the summer I don’t even have a bus pass. All of these things add up to the fact that I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been in my life by deleting one of the machines from my daily use list. Hooray! And while it can be irritating not having my own computer, I’m sure I get more painting done not having one acessable at home.
I’ll buy that it’s annoying and even dangerous when people go around thinking that the world is simple just because they’re surrounded by pre-packaged goods and easy-to-use things that go *PING*. Tikimama’s post even echoes my own sentiments regarding the perils of modern technology. But your post confuses me:
Is this an argument against all technology or just technology that goes beyond one’s ability to re-create it?
Eg. Matches. I don’t know how to create a match. I might be able to make a servicable striking surface, but mixing the incendiary tips is quite beyond me. Should I therefore beware my dependance on them? Should I, now and then, practice rubbing sticks together just for the philosophical exercise? I certainly couldn’t make myself a light-bulb… I have some candles, but maybe I should be stockpiling them! Well… actually… I am afraid I really wouldn’t be able to make a candle if someone didn’t weave the wick and collect the wax for me. I rather doubt my hand at crafting a container for melting the wax to dip my candles in too. Perhaps torches… oh, but what will I use for fuel? I’ve always bought the oil at a store…
Or are you saying there’s something evil about accepting a well-designed gui as “how-to-do” something? Having learned how to do something in a single click somehow has the ability to put us in spiritual bondage because we do not understand how to accomplish the same thing in binary? Where does it end? Do I need to understand how to unravel the instructions of the CPU I’m using and do everything in machine language? Barring a serious case of super-geek what about things that simply cannot be accomplished without tools that are beyond your ability to understand at an engineer’s level? For example CAD. Are CAD tools spiritually dangerous?
Am I just missing the point entirely?
I still insist that it is Teh Computar’s fault when it pisses me off. =) Anyway, yes, daggers at Apple. 90% of my job’s difficulty is because training is the red-headed stepchild of Apple. Apple computers are USER-FRIENDLY! They’re EASY TO USE! Nobody needs training on a Mac! Not even if they’re trying to run OS X server and distribute directory services across a WAN while keeping security tight! Whee! Yeah, Apple exacerbates that shit to a serious degree.
Anyway, you and yours (having worked in tech support) know as well as anyone that these things are not easy to use. Even when they seem easy to some of us. I admit that I am guilty of wondering “How the hell can anyone not figure out an iPod on his or her own?” but hell, this is why I have a job.
Now, for my next ‘simple’ project: if and I can figure out how to put birth control (for both genders) in alcoholic beverages, I will be rich, and I will buy all my friends new computers, and we shall be each other’s tech support.
Yeah, you are.
reductio ad absurdum, yeah. No not all Technology necessarily.
I think you’re trying to make it a capital T truth and expanding, which is isn’t really where I was going with it.
come away from the subjective and back to the objective.
Reductio ad absurdum my lily-white butt! 🙂 I grant you that the scenario I presented may seem exaggerated but you did not lay out an objective argument. You said, “The Machine* is the devil. The machine being a *device which you define as * A device (mechanical, systematic, model, etc) that attempts to make a difficult task easy, or replace man-hours of ‘work’ with automation, simplification, etc. That all seems like a very sweeping condemnation of most of the advances that us tool-makers have been coming up with since we figured out how to stick those leaves of grass down the ant-hole to get more crawly things to eat.
My point was, where do you draw the line? What, specifically is bad about using a device without understanding precisely how it works? Where ‘spiritual’ benefit is there to understanding that a system is complex even when Mr. Jobs has worked so hard to convince us that it’s easy? (I am not a believer in spiritual things so this point is extra confusing and appears highly subjective to me.)
I still agree with the basic premise that that knowing how things work and not deluding yourself into believing things are quite as easy and advertising dorks would lead you to believe is probably a good thing. You lose me when you start talking about spiritual lies and living “deliberately.” Automation is the devil? Eh?
Yep, I definitely lost you.
Replace all my ranting with “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” and you’ll grok the base of my meaning.
I hear you and will grok the meaning in the fullness of time.