Tech Madness

Want to know how to drive an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist technology nerd crazy?

 Release a new version of software, and then create a dumbed-down tutorial which doesn't explain all the new features.

Sometimes iTunes can be so infuriating! Today I spent several hours trying to figure out how to drag and drop a playlist from my iTunes library into my iPod. Yea, I know this makes me sound like an idiot, but Apple's newest version of iTunes, 11.0.1.12, is significantly different from their older versions. iTunes is extremely simple if you just choose to let iTunes auto-fill your device, but if you like to do things manually, things get a little more complicated. I like to do things manually because I would prefer if all the music from my iPod wasn't deleted by accident. Auto-fill runs this risk. I would rather watch and control the process so that I know everything is going where it is supposed to go.

Technical know-how is something which comes easily for me. In many ways, technology is a lot like science. All the pieces are complex, and everything fits together to form a complete, well-functioning whole. It is interesting, engaging, limitless, and I love everything about it. This is why this problem with iTunes bothered me so much. I think the reason I was so obsessed with it for the most part was because iTunes is so simple. 

If you encounter a problem involving theoretical physics which you don't understand, you will likely just walk away. But if you encounter a problem involving simple elementary concepts which is baffling you, it is going to drive you crazy! This is the same thing I was experiencing. 

I have the utmost respect and confidence in the technical developers at Apple. After all, they have consistently created hardware and software which is useful, cutting-edge, and functional. Because of this, when I found a popular feature missing from the newest version of iTunes, I assumed that it was still present, and I just needed to find it. 

Finally, after hours of tinkering and surfing through forums I stumbled onto the answer. That moment when you have conquered a problem which has been plaguing you is one of the most rewarding moments known to man. I smiled, and everything was better. Poof! The problem was gone! (Just as a side note, here is a link to the forum post where I described the problem and then later posted the solution: link)

I then went back to posts of other people who had the same problem and told them the solution. I could imagine others finding the solution which I labored over for hours and feeling that same joy. What a wonderful way to spread joy! 

I suppose maybe my obsessive need to find solutions could be considered unhealthy to some. After all, I shunned everything else I had planned to do today in order to find an answer to my problem. But the way I see it, doesn't every advancement in society, every improvement in human culture require someone with an unhealthy obsession to find the answer? Ingenuity comes out of necessity, and every great success has beneath it a mountain of backbreaking work, and a circle of people who were just obsessively determined enough to keep working where no one else would. 

I propose that obsession is not a problem that should be cured, but instead, it is a tool which must be controlled and shaped. 

Wall Post Friendships

You live in, let's say, Finland. I am either too busy or too lazy to write you a letter, snail mail is becoming illogical. I can't visit you, after all, I'm in college, I'm trying to pay for food and don't have enough left over for sentimental cross-continent trips.

However, I feel the need to show you that I'm thinking of you, no matter what my motives are for doing so. I know the solution! Facebook wall post!

What a sad era we are inhabiting. Of course the people who invented cars had such big dreams. "If we can get to town faster, we'll have more time to be at home with our families, just enjoying life." they reasoned. What they didn't anticipate is the concept that if you can get to town in twenty minutes, where it used to take two hours, you'll stop appreciating the time you've saved by about the second trip. If the car doesn't have gas, or if it breaks down, the individual no longer sees a two hour trip as a normal amount of time anymore. They just complain about all the inconveniences of the lost time. How quickly we forget. Soon, they're cramming three trips around town into the time that it used to take for one. No one has gained any more precious time, they've just come to expect a higher performance.

Of course, I can't scorn the busy lifestyle expectations into which society has evolved. I live one myself. But I still can pull out a letter from a childhood pen pall with a level of sentiment.

You know how a little old lady makes scornful remarks about the level of texting we do on our "newfangled" iPhone? We look at her, and say the kind equivalent of, "You stupid old woman, you are living in the past. Can't you see that technology is awesome, and you are basically not even slightly cool?"

My gentle sentimental mourning over that precious piece of snail mail the other day made me wonder, maybe one of the reasons that elderly people cling to those old-fashioned routines and devices of past is because there is something truly beautiful about them. Something that is being swept aside by the storm of today. Something wonderful, like opening the mailbox to find a hand-colored envelope covered in stickers, holding it in your hands, and feeling like just for a moment, the two of you are connected. Imagining that your fingertips are brushing against each other on either side of that envelope...

Of course there's room for things to go forward, they have to, just like time must go forward, and I'm still going to make my grandpa shake his head by how quickly I can "hit those little buttons" on my cell phone. But maybe it just means that tomorrow, when I feel like telling someone that I'm thinking of them, i'll pick up a pen and paper, just because we shouldn't let beautiful things die.