Some time ago I seem to remember Toyota had some quality problems which involved accelerators in their cars remaining depressed and the vehicles speeding out of control and impossible to stop. Nothing could be more frightening.
Now imagine writing a document in pen and ink (hard to do unless you are old fashioned like me) and imagine the pen suddenly starts spurting ink and writing “fuck, bugger, shit and bollocks” over and over again in capitals.
I think that would be even worse.
Well it’s my PC that’s got Tourette’s Syndrome and it’s much, much worse.
I’m revising one of my books, Brilliant Marketing, for the 2nd Edition and decided that a fairly substantial rewrite was needed given the pace of change in the recent marketing world. All was going swimmingly until this morning when something somewhere went mad and now I can only get one paragraph a page which given I’m prone to use short paragraphs looks pretty silly.
In fact, very silly.
And then all the fonts change to large bold and Ariel when they should be small not bold and Times New Roman and then as I watch everything turn to shaded blue. By now I’m going at 80 mph and the steering wheel has come off in my hand. I’m told it isn’t my PC at all but the printers’ word files I‘m using in which there are embedded templates so as I achieve my peak of brilliance in my changes some Dorset gremlin, because that’s where my printers live, decides to restrict the changes and makes me go mad by mucking it all up and in a west country burr says “how’d you enjoy that my dear?”
I don’t.
This sort of thing didn’t happen to Dickens or TS Eliot. I am a victim of 21st century technology or worse, a 21st century disease. Some mischievous editor virus that is sitting in the in the machine at random taking things out and putting things in? Bugger. Bugger. It’s all very, very disconcerting.
Cars that never go wrong and brilliant computers are all very well until they do and when they do you are f……the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog…..bugger, bugger.
Monday 12 September 2011
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3 comments:
Richard,
I think it is a sign that we live in a world full of too much complexity.
I have a similar issue where my new iPhone will not update my e-mails. The technologies are not compatible and I have wasted 3 hours trawling the web and trying to get it to work. Looks like lot's of people have the same problem. It was fine last night???
I think this issue (making things complicated) is one of our major challenges at the moment (both in home and corporate life).
How many people have taken a call from a partner, friend or colleague and tried to talk them through how to print a document. The caller is frustrated because the printed output doesn't look like the screen version (your problem as well). Print drivers are not compatible!!!!!
I think we have created a way of living and working which has forgotten about the beauty of simplicity.
We are all trying to live/work in an environment where we need to be compatible with so may other people/technologies that it doesn't work or costs unnecessary time/money!!!!
A programme I was working on recently had to be "socialised" i.e. get everyone man and his dog to agree they were happy!!!! WHY I ASKED!!!! Then the programme team (more than 10 people) had to spend 3 weeks doing this rather than getting on with delivering. Stakeholder management is very important in all walks of life but this seemed too much.
The opposite is a couple of friends who runs a flourishing small business (employing 12 people). They keep things simple because every minute and penny is important. Are they happy.....HELL YES!!!!
I feel simple delivers.
Happy printing!!!
Ranvir Saggu, how dare you lecture me on simplicity when, in my experience in argument, you effortlessly went through layer after layer of complexity and outflanked lesser mortals with your intellect.
Past tense, you’ll say. The layers, hopefully not the intellect.
And I agree very seriously with what you say.
The answer is not exactly dumbing down but focusing on the few things that really matter.
It’s about taking away buttons and options not adding them, giving me good choice not lots of choice and doing importance things well (like Aga and Bose)
Schaffer the consultancy in Stamford who I’ve worked with have turned their attention to this – read this http://schafferresults.posterous.com/the-three-cs-of-simplicity-1
Simplicity is one of my key themes for the next 12 months.
When it’s too complicated to understand something’s wrong or as I might say “it’s all Greek to me” – gosh, how topical that sounds.
Richard
Enter cloud base computing and Google Apps http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
So many businesses that don't have a technical background might indeed be so much better off with this approach.
Evolution sometimes jumps and this time it might be jumping to a cloud!
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