A Dozen Great Myths About
New Technology
By John Hedtke
Originally published in Technicalities, the
newsletter of STC's Rocky Mountain Chapter
Even if we don't write about new technology for our jobs, we
still have to use it to get our jobs done. New technology is
frequently surrounded by hype, misperceptions, and outright lies
that make it harder for us to use it effortlessly. This article
discusses some of the most pervasive myths of new technology.
We'll look at a cluster of general concepts first:
- New technology is easier to use
than old technology.
This one's pure marketing hype. While it may actually be
true occasionally, it's important to factor in the cost of
learning the new technology and becoming proficient in it.
Perhaps the best example of this is that we all have, at one
time or another, chosen to delay switching from one product
or technology to another simply because it was going to take
time to install/learn/get the new finger rhythms in place.
In addition, some old technology is worth keeping
indefinitely; I still type 30 words per minute faster on
keyboards that have the CTRL key next to the "A" and the
function keys on the right rather than on the newer
keyboards that have the CapsLock key there.
You can still buy keyboards that work the way they used to,
but they're a little more expensive. But for me, who learned
to use computers when men were men and 640K was enough for
anybody, it's worth the money to stay with the older
technology.
- New technology is more difficult
to use than old technology.
Hey, there's no reason that techno-myths can't be mutually
exclusive! One of the things that people often expect, as a
result of being burned too often, is that new technology is
always going to be more difficult to use than what it
replaces. But this one is no truer than the previous
techno-myth. The driving reason for creating and selling new
technology is usually a perceived need for something that
works better than any existing technology. While the
manufacturers may fail in their delivery, they're going to
try to do something that works well and actually has a
reason for selling.
- New technology is
better/faster/cheaper than old technology.
"Ending is better than mending," some say. But just because
something is new does not mean it's better. We do
live in hope. The cost of installing and supporting a new
technology can be far greater than the cost of the new
technology itself. Moreover, many new technologies simply
miss the mark; they aren't well designed, they don't solve
the real problem, or they don't work as advertised. Some
ideas speak for themselves in this regard: consider car
alarms.
The key to these three techno-myths is the idea that we can
do things better and faster without changing anything. All
improvements will result in some measure of change, no
matter what we do. It may actually be worth our time to make
the change to a new technology and it may be an improvement
when we do, but each change should be evaluated in its own
right.
With these basic myths out of
the way, there are some specific misconceptions you should
consider:
New tools will help you get the project out more quickly.
Most new technology will give you only a very slight increase in
productivity. (There are wonderful counter-examples to this,
however, such as online help tools like RoboHelp or Web
development tools versus doing things by hand.) Something else
to think about: Fred Brooks, in The Mythical Man-Month,
identified Brooks' Law, which states, "Adding more people to a
later project will only make it later." Sadly, this can be true
of technology as well. Timesaving is a desirable effect of new
technology, but it's not to be expected. A technology that bills
itself as being a major time-saver may deliver far less than it
promises.
- New technology will work
seamlessly with the older technology.
Hahahahahohohohoheeheeheehee! No matter what the new
technology, it won't always work as predicted. One of the
best examples of this is "Plug 'n Play" technology for
Windows. Supposedly when you install a new video card, hard
disk, or whatever, the operating system will recognize the
new item and load the right driver—and life is seamless.
This is a lovely idea and actually works perhaps half the
time, but owing to the vagaries of both software and
hardware you frequently must hack on the system to make it
all work right. This has a corollary techno-myth—"It's a
system problem." They're all human problems, but sometimes
it's just hard to track down the human responsible for the
problem.
- New technology will reduce or
eliminate paperwork.
It's possible that the Palm Pilot® has reduced paperwork,
but that's probably the first time a new technology has
actually done so. Every other technology has actually
increased the amount of paper you need to deal with. Want
proof? We have spent about a trillion dollars on computers
and technology in the U.S. in the past 25 years, but paper
use has increased steadily despite the continual
incorporation of new technology. (And, yes, there was a
paperless toilet invented by the Japanese in the late 1980s,
so the old canard about paperless offices did come true.)
- Buying the latest thing is a
good idea.
Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to rush out and
buy the latest, greatest version of technology. Only a fool
would install a brand-new version of, say, Windows or Word
or even FrameMaker on a mission-critical computer, if for no
other reason than it hasn't been tested by the public ("the
slow gazelles in the herd"). It's a good idea to wait as
long as possible before installing the newest software
version—a year is usually about right in my experience, by
which time there will have been a couple of service packs
that will probably fix the most heinous bugs.
This sense of caution doesn't
apply just to software. Buying the latest and greatest hardware
is going to cost you as much as twice what the next older
version costs for only an incremental increase in performance.
There are dozens of examples of this, including the latest CPUs,
DVD writers, large-screen monitors, wide-screen TVs, and
microwave ovens. If you can afford to wait or you don't need the
hottest version, you'll save money and get something more
mature. You'll also avoid a lot of compatibility problems (for
example, not all DVDs play on all DVD players).
What distinguishes these techno-myths is that they're primarily
extensions of marketing hype. They may actually be true, but
there's a good chance that they're mere canards. New technology
isn't going to be seamless, but it may well be worth it if you
keep an eye on what's real.
This article wouldn't be complete without a few of the great
corporate techno-myths:
- With the new support system in
place, our support volumes will decrease 50 percent.
Just as your productivity won't go up by leaps and bounds
when you add a new technology, the call load in support
isn't going to drop by massive amounts, no matter what
technology you implement. You may cause gradual decreases in
the support call volume by improving the product, the
documentation, or the marketing, but it's not going to
happen overnight. (You can also increase the call load by
messing up any or all of these things, but there's probably
no value to you in doing so.)
- All artists use Macs.
There used to be a significant difference between Macs' and
Windows-based computers' capabilities. Some of this was
definitely real—Macs really did do graphics better and they
were certainly lower maintenance and friendlier than DOS or
Windows—but some of this was marketing hype. While a case
could be made that Macs are still friendlier and more
stable, Windows computers are what 94 percent of the market
uses. (For the record, I have always thought that Macs are
better computers in general but I can't stand 'em
personally.) Nevertheless, the techno-myth remains that
creative types use Macs by preference. The bottom line for
this techno-myth is that you should use whatever computer
suits you best.
- Everything is intuitively
obvious.
Also: "Oh, our users don't need that—they'll know exactly
what to do," or "It's so easy anyone can do it." This is one
of the best corporate techno-myths of all. In college, we
learned about hubris as the driving force behind ancient
Greek tragedies, but most of us thought we'd never actually
see it for ourselves. But then we got jobs in high
technology. New technology is almost never "intuitively
obvious." The fact that new technology will involve learning
new concepts and possibly a new way of thinking about
something is in direct opposition to "intuitively obvious."
More likely, this just means that the developer or engineer
has a clear idea of how he (it always seems to be a guy who
says this) thinks the product will be used and he doesn't
want to hear anything that counters that.
- Microsoft did it that way, so we
should/should not do it that way, too.
Unless your company is alto a multi-billion dollar company
with more marketing muscle than anyone else, it's probably a
bad idea to use Microsoft as a primary justification for
pursuing (or not pursuing) a course of action. Microsoft can
command economies of scale and marketing budgets that the
rest of us only dream about, but that also makes them
farsighted; it's simply not worth their time to pursue a
product that won't generate at least $20 million in revenue.
The rest of us are usually quite willing to work very hard
for even a couple million bucks and should plan our actions
accordingly. Microsoft is Microsoft, you are you: the twain
shall not meet.
These techno-myths demonstrate
that companies are prone to falling for classic lies, too. While
you may not have great luck in convincing the powers that be
that they're making a mistake in their reasoning, you can be
prepared for the outcomes and avoid the fallout.
This brings us to the greatest techno-myth of all:
- Computers are easy to use.
My all-time favorite techno-myth, this one probably causes
more frustration than any other. Regardless of our skill
levels, we are all frustrated by our computers, frequently
quite audibly. This is because, even if we've never used a
computer ourselves before, we already know what computers
are like; they're just like they are on Star Trek. You can
talk to them, they understand whatever garbled, inexact,
ambiguous questions you ask, they keep track of where
everyone is and where to find their socks, and they never,
ever crash.
Unfortunately, we come to using computers with this picture
in our heads and the reality is a good deal less pleasant.
Our computers don't respond well when we talk to them (even
if we have voice recognition software); they're clunky, and
you constantly have to mess with installing new software and
doing nitty little maintenance tasks. For the record, I'd
love to have a computer that was smart enough to understand
what I said and could also tell me where I last left my car
keys, but they're not available yet.
Despite all the comments to the
contrary, techno-myths are occasionally true. New technology
sometimes will work as advertised and be cheaper, faster, and
better. Our laundry and teeth will be cleaner and brighter and
we'll save money and resources, too. We'll fall for techno-myths
occasionally no matter what we do, but if we keep our eyes open,
we won't do it often. Furthermore, by looking for the
techno-myths, we'll be able to adopt the new technologies that
will really help us and can avoid the dead ends that can only
waste our time.
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