My Laptop Died and I Don’t Care (The Trough of Disillusionment?)

12-13-11

At 50 I can now state (even if I was to live to see 100 years) that I spent the first 1/3 of my life as a technophile.  Since that time I’ve lived through a few tough lessons that have brought me a long way from the wide-eyed kid that watched the moon landings on ‘one of them new color TV’s’…  The most important lessons are to distinguish a ‘want’ from a ‘need’ (yet to permit myself a modest number of ‘wants’), that life is a miracle (and therefore sacred), that I am interconnected (to my family, friends, coworkers, society, environment, God), and that there is no ‘better life’ through technology (in fact all technology is a double-edged sword) or politics (please – don’t get me started).

So, a few days ago I was obliged to end my long association with my laptop.  This was the vehicle with which I earned my Masters Degree – so I feel like I should take it out into the backyard and give it a proper burial or something.  Thus I am now ‘sans’ a computer, and after feeling weird and unconnected for an hour or so, I started to feel angry at myself for feeling weird.  …Fact is we (and the rest of the neighborhood) are awash in electronic devices that connect with the internet (are we still even calling it that?).  Hey – I’m making this blog entry aren’t I?

For some time now, my wife and I have been contemplating what sort of devise we should plan to replace our aging laptops with, and so I should rejoice at the opportunity to rush right out and pick up a slick new replacement machine – or maybe not…  In observance of the holiday season, let me elaborate on the bit about interconnectedness and technology…  As a kid I was stunned by the Apollo moon landings and fed on optimistic science fiction storied about successfully overcoming the challenges that would face us in the future (usually through technological means), and Super Hero comics.  The only exception to this mantra was the classic War of the Worlds in which a simple virus saved the day (but of course that story was the product of a different age).  These and other forces active in my childhood lead me to the assumption that progress (manifested in increasingly sophisticated technology) was linier, inevitable and destined to just keep making life better and better for everyone.

My first disillusionment came with the Viet Nam war.  The world’s most sophisticated technology could not defeat a determined foe who was better adapted to the existing natural environment wherein the conflict took place.  Other notable pieces included the fuel crisis of the 1970’s (my first eye-witness to fist fights between adults) and ‘super-germs’ that have survived to become impervious to over-used antibiotics, add in a couple of exploding Space Shuttles, a Chernobyl, a Bhopal, and a friend or two lost flying helicopters for the Army and you get a world class recipe for a technology cynic.  Science Fiction was feeling the burn-out just like me, evidenced by the replacement of Star Trek with X-Files and The Day the Earth Stood Still with Soylent Green.  By my late thirties I was intentionally placing myself about two to three years behind the technology wave, to avoid getting caught with ‘Beta’ in a VHS world (if you’ve read this far you probably know what that means).  Since adopting this tactic, my only personal misstep has been a digital ‘super eight’ video camera.

By now, I look through narrow, suspicious eyes at new technology automatically – wondering what (not if) the downside is.  Smart phones are intrusive (and two of mine have mysteriously been sucked out of the window of vehicles which I was operating on freeways), the medium of the solitary ‘computer-geek’ is now the superhighway of ‘social media’ and ‘virtual life’ (and the ‘geeks’ are those few who opt out), our pockets can now be picked from Nigeria (but more likely our retirement savings will just become someone’s golden parachute right here at home), and most of this digital golden age is fueled by batteries that require mining in environmentally delicate, politically unstable parts of our shrinking world.  I could go on and on, but I won’t (Merry Christmas!).

Surely technology has made us more interconnected.  Interconnected with the people we care about and choose to interact with, as well as the worst elements of society.  …Interconnected with our own inner demons as well.  Lives are ruined by identity theft, on-line gambling and pornography addictions, cyber-bullying and wasted by hours and hours of gaming which amounts to nothing at all…  Too often, this is the content that our ‘content providers’ have brought us in this ‘golden age of information’.  I’m not taking the ‘high-road’ here, I have had my scraps with some of these myself, but I think I have reached the ‘mother of all’ troughs of disillusionment.  No, I’m not feeling scrooge-like because of the holidays, nor am I even feeling depressed…  Please let me explain…  A long, long time ago I was a young Industrial Design student, and some of the classes that I took exposed me to concepts like ‘appropriate technology’, and technology development curves.  I remember one that subdivided the phases of the development of specific technologies into distinct phases of archaic, classical, baroque and rococo (archaic – emerging understanding, classic – basic technology understood and innovation resulting in dramatic improvements, baroque – technology understood but innovation increasingly expensive and  having diminished results when implemented, rococo – technology understood but very expensive innovations now actually degrading the original functionality).

Another blast from my past is something called a ‘hype-cycle’ which works in five phases;

1.      "Technology Trigger" — Or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.

2.      "Peak of Inflated Expectations" — In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

3.      "Trough of Disillusionment" — Technologies enter the "trough of disillusionment" because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.

4.      "Slope of Enlightenment" — Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the "slope of enlightenment" and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.

5.      "Plateau of Productivity" — A technology reaches the "plateau of productivity" as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.

This hype-cycle is usually encountered in marketing and advertizing – the phases being defined by how much hype the press or the pop-culture buzz (…Do they call that ‘tweeting’ now?) is giving the technology.  All these curves were graphically represented by normal distribution curves.  In the case of the hype cycle, I’ve definitely reached the point where I feel that the technology has failed to meet expectations.  Placing myself at an estimated two to three years behind the newest tech offerings, I definitely operate technology that has been abandoned by popular culture.  …But perhaps this is more a rant against the ‘content providers’ of our age rather than the technology itself.  The content delivered by most of these slick high-tech systems is often unimaginative and tiresome – sometimes corrosive and destructive.  Where they are of value – they are really of tremendous value (instant communication, GIS Mapping, weather analysis, timely news from everywhere).

At this point I might add through anecdotal observation that I observe few technologies that are not abandoned long before they make it through to the plateau of productivity.  Those things that do are often iconic in that they are not looked upon as being especially ‘cool’, but neither are they despised because they have proven so indispensible and valuable (think iron and ironing board or a door knob, or scotch tape).  Vehicles are machines that I might argue are by definition; of above average value (both financially and operationally).  Therefore over time (with many miss-steps along the way) they tend to fall into this category (think Boeing 707 or DC-3, Ford Model T or Corvette, a sailboat or a submarine) and everyone (young and old, man and woman) knows their appearance on almost a subconscious level.

Of these icons, the sailboat is by far the oldest.  Arguably the sailboat, followed by the magnetic compass and the chariot are the oldest machines of any significant complexity devised by human kind (depending upon whether one chooses to include the bow and arrow or not). It is my belief that boats (and in particular sailboats) have embedded themselves into the collective subconscious, with symbolic meaning dating back to pre-historic times.  Not that I'm given to flights of mysticism, but I am saying that this device has empowered humans since that time and has therefore come to be iconic in our subconsciousness.  Also I would not be much of a mariner or pilot if I didn't have a couple minor superstitious quirks aboard.


P.S. Full Moon this last Weekend (Saturday 12-10-11) - last one in this year...