Hello valued readers!
Last week I ran into a ridiculous technological misfire that consumed many hours as I first attempted to solve the riddle on my own, and then roped in my husband. It’s fascinating that such instances of technology that just won’t work frustrates most people to mouth-frothing rage within nanoseconds. It’s like that red mist road-rage that descends upon normally tolerant people once they sit behind the wheel of a car. They have the patience of Job for their loved ones, small infants, pets, and even that aggravating cousin with conspiracy theory tendencies, but someone cuts them off in traffic: ho boy, they transform into what sounds like a hardened gang member and the foulest trash talk erupts!
I’m not immune to tech-temper as I’m an impatient person by default who has learned patience through necessity, but I have triggers.
As an Arts graduate who moved into a tech career I like to think that I’ve a good combination of artistic sensibility and technical know-how. I also did my time as tech support for a small network therefore I’m used to dealing with people who have a poor understanding of technology. Yes, I’ve had phone calls where I’ve had to walk someone through all the permutations of asking ‘have you turned it off and on again?’ which is always a good step to take, and sometimes even I need to remember the basics. You can’t blame people for not being technically proficient, you can only try to help them. That job trained me to take deep breaths, put on my goggles of clarity and to mine my seams of tolerance.
Yet, because I’ve hung out with genuine tech wizards I don’t have an inflated sense of my ability. My husband, Martin, is a mechanical engineer by training and a software engineer with several decades of experience. As far as our gear is concerned, Martin is ‘He Whose Voice Must be Obeyed’. Despite my knowledge, I’ve had instances where a misbehaving device will suddenly become obedient when Martin is finally called in to trouble-shoot the miscreant.
‘But it wasn’t working before,’ I declaim, controlling my urge to destroy the traitorous gadget, which is now throwing my husband the equivalent of Anime school-girl starry-eyes of innocent trustworthiness.
‘It is now,’ he’ll note, patting the little Judas on its head.
‘You,’ I’ll whisper to it, after he has departed, ‘are on very thin ice!’ I might even point to the garbage bin, and mime what I’ll do to it.
Despite the fact that most of the computers and peripherals in our house are well behaved they like to test our limits every now and again. Perhaps it’s some pack mentality, where over time they get ‘notions’, size up Martin and think they could take him down as lead geek.
A while back Martin’s computer attempted such a coup, and it was not without bloodletting,1 but he prevailed. That is the order of things.
In the end, all the devices in our house know they can be disassembled. Martin often breaks them down for parts before recycling the cast-off pieces. There are Frankenstein machines in my house that whisper to any misbehaving kit: ‘Calm down! He’ll take out your usable circuits, toss the rest away, and use you to fix a lamp!’
By the way, printers and scanners do rate as the most misbehaving of all peripheral devices. The older they get the more trouble they become —partly because of the in-built obsolescence of technology. One day you’ll be forced to upgrade your laptop or computer and suddenly it’s the house of Babel, and they can’t speak to each other any more.
You could consider letting off some steam when that occurs…
(The red mist rage infects the Office Space gang. Warning: very bad language.)
So to our latest technological mishap, which you can boil down to a simple fact: tech companies are always changing how they do things, often with absolutely no consideration for their users.
I wanted to buy an old film that I needed for research. No, it wasn’t available on any of the streaming services I pay for. In order to buy a physical copy (which was my preference) I’d have to order it from the UK or Germany, because a short online search revealed no Irish companies that would ship it to me.
Right there are two barriers that don’t need to exist.
I made the decision to buy the film digitally, as it was the cheapest option and should have been the most expedient. I’ve done this before, especially if they are inexpensive. I went with Google, as when I’d used it previously to buy a film it instantly appeared in my library of movies in my YouTube app on my TV.
Here is where the fun and games began.
I will not go into the tedious details of the rigmarole that ensued, because it will be deeply boring to the non tech-heads among you, but the short version is that if you buy a movie now via Google it’s only going to be playable via the latest Google TV app. Pray that your device supports that app, because if you have an older Smart TV or an Apple TV box (for example) you are out of luck.2
It will take anything up to two days for the movie you paid for to appear in your YouTube library. I hope you are not in a rush.
This was a huge waste of time in our household. Both of us have a pigheadedness when it comes to a tech mystery: it must be solved! As it happened I didn’t need to watch the film immediately, but we figured out three different work-around solutions to make it work if I had.
Worst still, because Apple TV is both a device and an app, and Google TV is both a device and an app, trying internet searches for the solution was as frustrating as the problem itself.
As someone who has grown up with technology I’ve had a lot of experience with the stupid silos that the big companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft throw up around their products. Why bother with standards and open protocols when you don’t care (or prefer) that it makes your systems incompatible? The changes are often touted as making everything better, but why does it invariably cost us more time and money in the long run? This is an old story, but one with which I’m exceedingly bored. We are supposed to be an era of instanteous media on-demand, with seemless connectivity, but instead we’re spending time switching between apps and devices, trying to find the one magic combination that will do the simple thing we require, such as watching a movie (putting a physical disc in a player remains the most reliable, and permanent, option).
These companies want consumers to buy only one brand and upgrade often. Martin and I may be tech-savvy, but we don’t upgrade unless necessary, especially if everything works well. We also run a hybrid household, meaning we have Apple devices, PCs, gaming systems, and even machines running Linux. We choose what’s best for the job, we cannibalise remnants, and often pass down old machines to other people. We don’t like waste.
We’re lucky in this regard, because many people will cave from the frustration and go out and buy the latest product. Plenty of people don’t have the means to upgrade constantly.
I’ve been going through a period of decluttering and tidying away unused items in our house. But the two categories I have the most difficulty thinning down are books and DVDs/Blu-Rays. Partly because they are the most reliable method of reviewing material. Everything else is leased, temporary, insubstantial or based on the whims of ever-changing terms and conditions.
With all the talk of AI and how things will change in the future, one of my suspicions is that the physical artefact is going to become much more prized. We may have fewer of them but people will be willing to splurge on good quality and well-fashioned goods.
As well as personalised chatbots, the future will be in the artisanal and the bespoke. If you have any talents for making things then start honing your skills. That could be your big career pivot.
Miscellaneous
I watched Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 and enjoyed it as a big-hearted, fun adventure film, which even had some heart-breaking moments. One stand-out I’ve always liked about the Guardians series is the gonzo, bizarre design of many of the characters and their societies. But I always prefer weird over pretty. Science fiction often leans towards po-faced and serious, and that’s perfect in small doses (especially if it’s exceptional) but much of what is trotted out is visually vacuous and narratively constipated.
When it comes to design, give me David Lynch’s incoherent, misshapen version of Dune over Denis Villeneuve’s blue/green-soaked minimalism. They both have merits, but Lynch’s piece better evokes a baroque space feud of families fighting over a limited resource — you know, Dallas in Space.
But as I stated, I prefer weird over pretty (I’ll get to my opinions on some of the more maligned entries in the Alien franchise at some point…).
Stay weird, people!
As a pan-criticial rationalist Martin does not have my anthropomorphic impulses. I’m a bit of an animist at heart. Yet, even among the tech anti-gods there are certain superstitions. Including an observation that if a machine causes you to bleed while you are attempting to fix it then it was hungry. ‘It’s had its blood,’ Martin will say philosophically, while reaching for a band-aid and wielding a screwdriver in a slightly more threatening manner.
Please note I do not like to watch movies on a smartphone or a tablet, when I need to give them a deep analysis. That option was available.
Now that M’s awake able to watch the videos. Laughed out loud. Thanks.
It's always printers...always, always printers. I own at least three but if I need something printed out I wait until I go to work to do it!
Great Read Maura