Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

Useless Add-Ons

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It is never a surprise to discover that once-innovative human inventions have devolved under the weight of bogus improvements.

It seems to be a natural result of the things we invent that “refinements” added to perpetuate a product finally that turn into burdensome add-ons. Entropy is a guiding force that can sabotage “improvements.” This is certainly not true in every case. With exceptions, we made some great advances in the eradication of diseases like polio. We have also shrunk the world, making it easier to reach people over great distances. But it is never surprising when once-innovative human inventions devolve after attempts at refinement. Add -ons to software and hardware can easily weaken the core advantages of the earlier form of an application or product. No one would look at the later bloated versions of the original 1956 Ford Thunderbird and call them improvements. It was originally a coherent vision of a smaller and sporty car. In that era cars also had the advantage of real switches and knobs, not touchscreens. Am I the only one a touch screen seems to ignore? The “improvement” of this “rub and hope” ergonomics has left countless drivers unable to easily control key functions like heating and cooling. Auto-makers like them because they are cheap to make. And they look more cutting-edge. The first car that I owned was a Honda. . .  with a spoiler over the trunk. That addition was purely a case of form over function, with some personal vanity thrown in. My car never experienced wind-tunnel speeds.

If you get a chance to look, notice that a modern airline cockpit uses screens for displays, but relies on click knobs and real switches for critical controls. And, more generally, let’s not even pretend that flying in coach is still an exciting way to travel. You will pay more for a routine flight if you want the luxury of taking along a suitcase. One of the disadvantages of being a young traveler is that they don’t know what good service used to look like. In a mobbed Philadelphia airport a few weeks ago they were clearly the happiest people, apparently accepting their fates as just so much air cargo.

Customer service by phone-tree or closed-option questions is usually vastly different from actually speaking to an informed employee at the firm from whom you need help. “Resort fees” are now tacked on if a modest hotel has a swimming pool and a palm tree out front. Even the ostensible advantage of home audio with seven channels will usually result in a degraded soundscape created by low-quality speakers that lack the accuracy of a good two-channel (stereo) system.

The same pattern of devolution away from a useful tool happened  years ago when most universities gave up the standard practice of publishing a hard copy of their yearly “catalogue.” The book-length document listed all the courses offered at the institution, and the degree requirements for every undergraduate and graduate major. It gave even a marginal first-year student a firm statement of the  contract they had with an institution, good for all of the four years of their education. When all this necessary information disappeared into various obscure online corners, most of my advisees never bothered to track down and map their academic future, missing requirements and prerequisites in the fog of internet distraction. Some had to delay their graduation as a consequence of never bothering to plot how they would spend their four years.

Because my career has included a great deal of writing, I’ve been able to track various iterations of Microsoft’s Word for Windows, which has evolved over the years with many add-ons: among them, an “editor” function, dictation function, and loads of graphics capabilities seemingly borrowed from the company’s Publisher and Paint software. Some of the add-ons help. But others get in the way of Word’s core function as a tool for committing ideas to the page. Add in new promises of A.I. “help,” and we will no longer be crafting messages that are fully ours. Traditionally, our written or spoken words have been the best representations of who we really are: textual fingerprints of the self that can now be faked by a digital assistant.

 

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The Mercy of a Short Election Season

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No wonder the drudgery of political posturing has provoked a sense of dread in the nation.

                                                      A.I. Image

The U.K. and most parliamentary democracies are able to keep elections periods to relatively reasonable lengths. Most recently, the required dissolution of Parliament before a new election took place at the end of May, this year. The general election to elect a new parliament and Prime Minister followed on July 4, allowing a campaign just a few weeks long. That’s it. In that amount of time U.S. candidates would still be pondering the color of shirts that look good on television.

To be sure, the new government headed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not very popular. But the Tories had worn out their welcome long ago. And the country was in the mood to bury them in  a landslide.  That they called for a new election is still a surprise.

As many have noted, running for the presidency and some congressional offices has turned American elections into “permanent campaigns” full of lies, distortions, ad hominem attacks and doubts about their basic fairness.  And we can add in assassination attempts.  It’s no way to run a democracy, creating a train of palaver that rarely seems to ever get out of the way. No wonder the drudgery of political posturing has provoked a sense of dread in the nation.

Imagine if you were charged with attending a film festival of an endless cycle of long and over-the-top Hollywood sagas: perhaps Gone With the Wind, Apocalypse now, and Godfather II: enough mayhem, preening, bluster, and excess to last a lifetime. And then imagine a Groundhog Day moment where the cycle repeats at the start of every new morning. This is now a feature of a typical news cycle: an endless nightmare of invective from politicians convinced they need to speak in oversimplifications to reach a distracted public.

The press is only too happy to set up shop and cover this free marathon for as long as the candidates can draw a breath. Add in a Supreme Court that thinks money is speech, and we are seemingly doomed to witness the agony of a democracy that is failing.

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“If we want to find the nadir of human folly, we should at least consider modern American campaigns, which, coincidently, offer the worst moments in the culture in service to one of its best traditions.”

The “system”–voters, the Constitution and political professionals– have inadvertently perfected an electoral system that has devolved to yield far more heat than light. Like the bleary-eyed viewer of those overheated Hollywood sagas, we stagger under the weight of glibness, lies, and—every now and then—a rare moment of insight that gets overlooked in a sea of dross. If we want to find the nadir of human folly, we should at least consider modern American campaigns, which, coincidently, offer the worst moments in the culture in service to one of its best traditions.  Elections based on the mood of voters and legislators rather than a set calendar has its advantages.

To be sure, Britain’s electoral efficiency has not cleansed itself of all political ineptness. Brexit especially has punished their manufacturing, the arts, and European solidarity. What remains  are shrunken aspirations of an island-nation cut off from the expansive EU. But they clearly have a less ossified mechanism for cleansing their political system.