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Future Shock and the Stress of Change
Apr. 24th, 2016 10:02 amThis post is all about First World Problems.
When I was in junior high, my English class (or maybe it was Social Studies class -- the program I was in had them paired with the same set of students and we often had joint assignments covering both) was assigned Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, a book about (as the author summarizes) "too much change in too short a period of time". The book was published in 1970, so it would have been quite recent when we read it. My thoughts went back to that book as I sat down to order my new Apple Macbook Air.
I don't think it's just a sign of being an old fuddy-duddy that I hate the rapid pace of computer-interface change with a passion. The flip side of "always offer something new and improved" is that for 99% of my computer use, something old and half-assed works perfectly well. And what works best is not having to constantly learn new ways to do the same old thing. And change purely for the sake of change? Changing the visual appearance of my phone interface, or the layout of the program tool menus, or the names given to various actions? It's hard not to see that as simply messing with us just because they can.
I have a friend who's a professional computer usability expert, and it's fascinating to read him expound on the nuances of determining the "perfect user experience" and how such things are measured. But in many ways, the perfect user experience is the one where the means of the experience are unnoticed in the moment and the user can focus on the end result. It doesn't matter if an interface is 5% better than the previous one if what I notice is that it's 100% different.
But computer-updating future shock isn't only about superficial aspects of interaction. Every time I approach a major operating system upgrade, I cast my mind back to all the software I've had that was obsoleted by a new OS that wouldn't run it. For the big programs--the MS Office and whatnot--I shrug and shell out. But over the years I've picked up a lot of programs that I might use a few times a year, or that I might be waiting for the right opportunity to explore, that were turned into junk by an "improved" OS. Eventually I learned my lesson. I stopped buying marginally useful software. Now there's a way to support the larger software industry! Discourage users from trying new things and taking chances.
After the last time this happened--installing OS 10.7--I bit the bullet and started running a second machine with an older OS so that I could switch over for the occasional project. That's where I'm running Adobe Creative Suite 3, for those three or four times a year when I want to mess around in Photoshop or do a booklet layout in InDesign. That's where I'm running MacLink so that I can continue working through my old WordPerfect files and convert them to something I can actually use.
I approach every software update with an underlying terror that something I've found useful, something I've invested time in, something my creative output is currently locked into, will be snatched away from me. Something as simple as the data in the automobile data log app that an iOS update made completely inaccessible because the app developer had decided to abandon it. (Fortunately, a competitor was snapping up new grateful customers by offering to do the data conversion to port it over to their app.) Or something as complicated as the music software files for various songbook projects that I may never be able to retrieve. (Including some arrangements that I may not have other copies of.)
My response to computer future shock has been to hunker down, retreat, become conservative in my usage. Stick to using a few core programs for everything, even if it means using them in awkward ways. Always know your escape route. It's made me even more committed to avoiding any program or system where I don't have direct control over and access to my data. Cloud storage? Only to mirror things that live on my hard drive. "Rented" software that requires a wifi connection to use at all? No thanks. (I noticed that the current Office suite is really pushing their "rental" version with their own proprietary cloud storage. Fortunately it's still possible to avoid that.)
What does hunkering down look like? My current laptop is 6 years old. When I bought it, it came with OS 10.6. It was upgrading to 10.7 that sent me into a tailspin of "OMG I could lose access to all my work and programs!" So I'm still running 10.7 and the most current version (El Capitan) is 10.11. I'm a version behind on iTunes, a version behind on iOS. But I can't update those until I get the new OS. The problem with hunkering down is that the world doesn't stop moving. You drop your phone and have to replace it. It comes with an iOS that requires a more recent OS. You update your phone apps and the new version won't run unless your running the current iOS. In the case of my favorite Twitter client (TweetBot), it hit a built in "kill date" after which the current version won't even open.
So I figured that if I need to bring everything up to date, then I might as well do it with a new machine as well. (I'm delighted to have left behind my "three-year burglary-driven laptop replacement plan".) But now I'm spending vast amounts of time and energy making lists of my current programs, researching reports on whether they'll run under El Capitan, identifying whether updating the programs will require jumping to a rental/cloud system, and above all else, working with the expectation that I'll lose a week of productivity getting everything to play nicely together after the shift. It makes my stomach churn just to think of it. I'm making a list of programs to update after the purchase--just the core ones I use all the time. I'm probably going to bite the bullet and start storing more stuff on Apple's iCloud simply to buy space on the phone and tablet. (Though most of my music is ripped from CDs, so iCloud is useless there.) And Apple has a long history of jerking users around about cloud storage and accounts and whatnot. (Mobile Me. Remember Mobile Me?) But I'll keep my Dropbox for documents because it works the way I'm comfortable with and it's never betrayed me yet.
And in the mean time, being a belt-and-suspenders type of gal, I've decided to make a drag-and-drop backup of my personal files to supplement the Time Machine backup. Just in case something goes badly wrong. And I find that the old external hard drives that I used for offsite backup in my pre-Time Machine days no longer talk to the laptop. It isn't worth figuring out why or how, but since they have old backups on them, I'll need to destroy them before discarding them. What a waste. So now I'm trying to figure out how to turn my older Time Capsule into a plain storage drive so I can do the backup. It isn't obvious. Fortunately, the personalized laptop I ordered (always upgrade everything to the top of the line when you only buy a new machine every 5 years or so!) won't arrive for a couple weeks. That should be enough.
Well, at least they're only First World Problems and I don't have to worry about drought or natural disasters or the looming threat of despotic fascist governments. Oh, wait.
When I was in junior high, my English class (or maybe it was Social Studies class -- the program I was in had them paired with the same set of students and we often had joint assignments covering both) was assigned Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, a book about (as the author summarizes) "too much change in too short a period of time". The book was published in 1970, so it would have been quite recent when we read it. My thoughts went back to that book as I sat down to order my new Apple Macbook Air.
I don't think it's just a sign of being an old fuddy-duddy that I hate the rapid pace of computer-interface change with a passion. The flip side of "always offer something new and improved" is that for 99% of my computer use, something old and half-assed works perfectly well. And what works best is not having to constantly learn new ways to do the same old thing. And change purely for the sake of change? Changing the visual appearance of my phone interface, or the layout of the program tool menus, or the names given to various actions? It's hard not to see that as simply messing with us just because they can.
I have a friend who's a professional computer usability expert, and it's fascinating to read him expound on the nuances of determining the "perfect user experience" and how such things are measured. But in many ways, the perfect user experience is the one where the means of the experience are unnoticed in the moment and the user can focus on the end result. It doesn't matter if an interface is 5% better than the previous one if what I notice is that it's 100% different.
But computer-updating future shock isn't only about superficial aspects of interaction. Every time I approach a major operating system upgrade, I cast my mind back to all the software I've had that was obsoleted by a new OS that wouldn't run it. For the big programs--the MS Office and whatnot--I shrug and shell out. But over the years I've picked up a lot of programs that I might use a few times a year, or that I might be waiting for the right opportunity to explore, that were turned into junk by an "improved" OS. Eventually I learned my lesson. I stopped buying marginally useful software. Now there's a way to support the larger software industry! Discourage users from trying new things and taking chances.
After the last time this happened--installing OS 10.7--I bit the bullet and started running a second machine with an older OS so that I could switch over for the occasional project. That's where I'm running Adobe Creative Suite 3, for those three or four times a year when I want to mess around in Photoshop or do a booklet layout in InDesign. That's where I'm running MacLink so that I can continue working through my old WordPerfect files and convert them to something I can actually use.
I approach every software update with an underlying terror that something I've found useful, something I've invested time in, something my creative output is currently locked into, will be snatched away from me. Something as simple as the data in the automobile data log app that an iOS update made completely inaccessible because the app developer had decided to abandon it. (Fortunately, a competitor was snapping up new grateful customers by offering to do the data conversion to port it over to their app.) Or something as complicated as the music software files for various songbook projects that I may never be able to retrieve. (Including some arrangements that I may not have other copies of.)
My response to computer future shock has been to hunker down, retreat, become conservative in my usage. Stick to using a few core programs for everything, even if it means using them in awkward ways. Always know your escape route. It's made me even more committed to avoiding any program or system where I don't have direct control over and access to my data. Cloud storage? Only to mirror things that live on my hard drive. "Rented" software that requires a wifi connection to use at all? No thanks. (I noticed that the current Office suite is really pushing their "rental" version with their own proprietary cloud storage. Fortunately it's still possible to avoid that.)
What does hunkering down look like? My current laptop is 6 years old. When I bought it, it came with OS 10.6. It was upgrading to 10.7 that sent me into a tailspin of "OMG I could lose access to all my work and programs!" So I'm still running 10.7 and the most current version (El Capitan) is 10.11. I'm a version behind on iTunes, a version behind on iOS. But I can't update those until I get the new OS. The problem with hunkering down is that the world doesn't stop moving. You drop your phone and have to replace it. It comes with an iOS that requires a more recent OS. You update your phone apps and the new version won't run unless your running the current iOS. In the case of my favorite Twitter client (TweetBot), it hit a built in "kill date" after which the current version won't even open.
So I figured that if I need to bring everything up to date, then I might as well do it with a new machine as well. (I'm delighted to have left behind my "three-year burglary-driven laptop replacement plan".) But now I'm spending vast amounts of time and energy making lists of my current programs, researching reports on whether they'll run under El Capitan, identifying whether updating the programs will require jumping to a rental/cloud system, and above all else, working with the expectation that I'll lose a week of productivity getting everything to play nicely together after the shift. It makes my stomach churn just to think of it. I'm making a list of programs to update after the purchase--just the core ones I use all the time. I'm probably going to bite the bullet and start storing more stuff on Apple's iCloud simply to buy space on the phone and tablet. (Though most of my music is ripped from CDs, so iCloud is useless there.) And Apple has a long history of jerking users around about cloud storage and accounts and whatnot. (Mobile Me. Remember Mobile Me?) But I'll keep my Dropbox for documents because it works the way I'm comfortable with and it's never betrayed me yet.
And in the mean time, being a belt-and-suspenders type of gal, I've decided to make a drag-and-drop backup of my personal files to supplement the Time Machine backup. Just in case something goes badly wrong. And I find that the old external hard drives that I used for offsite backup in my pre-Time Machine days no longer talk to the laptop. It isn't worth figuring out why or how, but since they have old backups on them, I'll need to destroy them before discarding them. What a waste. So now I'm trying to figure out how to turn my older Time Capsule into a plain storage drive so I can do the backup. It isn't obvious. Fortunately, the personalized laptop I ordered (always upgrade everything to the top of the line when you only buy a new machine every 5 years or so!) won't arrive for a couple weeks. That should be enough.
Well, at least they're only First World Problems and I don't have to worry about drought or natural disasters or the looming threat of despotic fascist governments. Oh, wait.
