Do you remember when… They said "Computers will make your life more efficient."

I'm running between tasks today and as I'm doing so the thought occurred to me from many years ago that it was touted by all the media: "Computers Will Make Your Life More Efficient!" And they even followed that statement with "it will be a paperless society." Boy if I could go back in time, would I have news for them....

Now don't get me wrong… Multitasking and technology can do wonderful things. But the one thing the daydreamers of yesteryear forgot was the concept of finite time and the tendency to fill everything up. The faster you can go, the more needs to be done, because essentially everything else is sped up as well.

I wonder if we could even handle going back 50 or 60 years. Think about it nothing you know would exist except for the very basic items. Cringe, if you went to the bank you would have to stand in line and wait as they tabulate the answer. Or be astonished by how quickly the representative could do the math in their head. The impulses we normally given to on an hourly basis to check our phones and do other things would drive us crazy, simply because there would be no way to do them. You would have to wait for that phone call or maybe drive all the way home to make it. And if you frequently now talk to your friends around the world, while you could do that you run the risk of one very nasty phone bill at the end of the month. No wonder our parents were terrified the moment they realized the children could reach the phone. In my case, thank goodness my grandmother lived in town because I do remember calling her rather frequently.

It would be the same thing for the news. Let me know in the comments if you've never read a physical newspaper. Top that off with the fact that the reading skills 60 years ago tended to be much higher. English was slightly different. I remember a few of my teachers who were rather tyrannical about the written word. Or at least I thought they were dictatorial. I live in Canada and I still remember in grade three and up having to put two spaces after a period before a sentence could start. The same rule applied to the start of paragraphs, you had to indent them.

The first time I visited a library card indexes were still in use. Years later I remember my joy of being able to log on to the bank were public library with the dial-up modem at 300 baud. That was so slow you could read faster. It was also very easy to overload the system with a complex search. Which I admit I love to do.

No doubt there is a ton of other things that happened which haven't occurred to me...

I was introduced to computers through work when I believe we were at Microsoft DOS 2.0, which came out in October 1983. That is when I heard that ultimately "Computers would make things more efficient". It became a mantra. There were no hard drives in site because they were expensive and very sensitive. When my boss did get one, I was read the riot act by the computer representative: "You must park the drive when you're done with the machine. Do not bump the table. This has a huge storage capacity of 20 MB." "Park" was an actual command you had to run when shutting down the machine. I think the drive itself cost around $600 that is without any of the cards you needed to run it. Well we also got a printer for the office the noisiest daisy wheel type machine I have ever heard. We used to do our printing at lunch while we were all out of the office.

Guess what, we ended up using tons of paper! I remember it was all fanfold and you had to take off the tractor holes on the side of the sheets. Here's an example of a Daisy wheel printer in action (I no doubt have found an example on YouTube )

Actually know that I think about it we probably have saved time and maybe even some paper. I do 90% of everything purchased wise online as well as bills etc. maybe we are getting there 😀.

Take care Patrick

Why do people tend to desire the "old days"?

I have the oddest urge to find an old school electric typewriter and just write. (I'm not masochistic enough to desire a true manual typewriter😀)

This urge just popped out of nowhere, I'm actually getting ready for work/volunteering. We will see where this blog entry of mine goes… In the next day. You will be seeing the complete entry as I'm currently writing this as a draft. But this is how I often come up with ideas. I write down a quick note. Using whatever means it's necessary.

… It's the next day and this is the first time I've had a moment to return to this article…

One of the reasons I think the reasons we look back to the old days is that it is something understandable, we knew how it fits into the fabric of our lives back then and we knew what it meant. This is an understandable reaction to the modern day when everything is kind of scattered about. I don't know about you, but I deal with a lot of interruptions and minor detours throughout my day. Sometimes I feel like the information centre for my building especially when it comes to fixing things. But even the average person has kind of the scattered lifestyle it seems unless there one of the very lucky this profession or discipline allows them to cloister themselves away… The luxury of that thought has me momentarily jealous.

Anyway in modern society we have become accustomed to taking on too much and as a result too much is expected of us overall. How many of you have at the experience of someone being furious that you didn't answer their email right away. So the simplest solution is to either pare down the number of for lack of a better word "connections" you are currently hooked up to or if that is not an option segmenting them into certain days whenever possible. A friend of mine has a very good rule: "They do not do any work on Saturday at all. They won't even talk about it." This simple and direct change makes them ingenious in my book. Because it sets not only a boundary but it sets up an anticipation that on Saturday this person is just not available and that in turn sets an example.

So what do you think is that something you could apply in your life? Even to a small degree? You might start something if you do, and that something might turn out to be awfully good for everyone. Again it's making things simpler, just like we thought the old days were. Which I kind of doubt if we were actually back there in time.

Take care Patrick

Political Correctness

 Okay today's entry is going to be very short initially because I am under the gun with so many things right now. But I did want to post something....

There is a problem with "political correctness" and its related phrases. That is to say the wording we use in relation to a person or group automatically. Very often I find now days that the phrase used is now more important than the meaning or the intent of the message. That means that the society tends to get sensitized to the words used and ignores the message. That's can't be a good situation.

Indeed, I prefer the exact opposite. I don't care what phrasing or terminology you use in describing myself or someone else. Rather my focus is on your message and intent. 

Clarity of communication is the bottom line. If people and society are going to rely on political correct statements then need to, understand their origins, and  their context. Choose for yourself based on the situation you are in what you would like to do and what message you would like to convey.

The focus of all communication should be to remove ambiguity and inequality. It is very simple to put together a politically correct statement which still trashes the person's dignity if someone is so negatively inclined.

So don't rely on political correctness to do your work or you, and hope it keeps everything comfortable. Rather understand the context and purpose of the statement. Most of all take responsibility for what you say and do. At the end of the day you are the master of your own ship and sometimes political correct statements don't help in defining that truth.

Take care Patrick