How “old” technology stopped the “new”
by Dima on August 15, 2008
in observation, random, technology
This is probably my way of explaining to my few readers why I haven’t blogged for a while – I was moving. Part of moving is getting various services to the new place, internet being one of the vital ones. Following is a short sketch about how a piece of rather “old” technology delayed me in receiving this rather “new” one.
I made an arrangement with the local cable company and patiently waited for the “cable guy” to show up within the 5 hour window set for me by the service center. When he finally arrived, he turned to be a very nice, rather senior, man who worked as a subcontractor for the cable company and happened to be new to the are. He started setting up a cable modem – a procedure that is supposed to take about 15 minutes – when he realized that he does not have the keys to utility room of the apartment complex where cable box is located. It took us between 20-30 minutes to bring the manager of the complex to open the utility room, just to figure out that the padlock key for the box itself was not matching as well. It took us another 20-30 minutes until the cable company representative showed up and unlocked the box. Five minutes later i had internet in the new house.
That may be a slightly boring story, but it made me thinking how a 4000 years old technology keeps on playing such a central role in our lives and even has the ability of interfering in our interaction with the “newer” technologies. A simple few dollars lock and (lack of) and even cheaper key prevented my access for over an hour to one of the more sophisticated contemporary pieces of technology in domestic use. It was both ironic and fascinating to think about about it.
More so, it was really interesting to think about the human factor involved in any technology application. At the end of the day the fact that the “cable guy” did not have the right keys was a results of a human error or organizational failure. It is fascinating how little things actually change at the base even as technical sophistication grows.
This is a bit off-topic, but I’ve been thinking a bit lately about the common Lessig-esque analogy between software and physical architecture—something your post indirectly recalled for me in its contrast between computing and locked doors.
My thought is this: Does it make sense in such analogies to include a fifth factor beyond market, architecture, law, and social norms? That fifth would be something along the lines of “nature” or “physics.” In other words, while both are big factors in the way people behave in a built environment, there seems to be a big difference between the placement of walls on the one hand, and gravity on the other, which we appreciate in physical spaces, but not in online ones.
Or, to use a different example, look at energy-saving lightbulbs or Energy Star appliances. They do the same job as their less environmentally friendly counterparts. If I’m moving about in a building that employs them, it makes no direct difference in the way I behave. Collectively, though, such things have a big impact on the environment we live in, and things like the cost of energy. Because of this, those small, imperceptible differences in the physics of the built environment do have a sizable impact on our behavior indirectly, and they change the ecology of other traditional Lessig factors, like market, for instance.
I imagine there’s an analog for this division between code and nature in the digital world, having to do with things like the speed of computers, the efficiency of software code, the aggregate, indirect effects of Google’s code choices, and so on. But I’ve yet to fully think it through.