Category: Choosing not to do something

Technician Tuesday: It’s not magic, part II.

Yesterday I wrote about users who expect technology to be magic — and then find out it’s not. (That post was written and posted December 19, 2022.)

Later yesterday I was catching up on some old episodes of Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast. Episode 604 is titled “SPI 604 – I Really Wanted to Believe This” and it’s dated August 19, 2022. It’s about almost exactly the same thing: technology is not magic.

Flynn uses a good analogy of an amateur photographer who buys a new camera lens and hopes that will make all of his pictures better. At best the lens only showcases the photographer’s skill at timing and framing and composing. At worst it becomes a distraction and another thing to clutter up the photographer’s bag.

Flynn calls this “squirrel syndrome.” I’ve also seen it referred to as “shiny object syndrome.” By either name or any other name, the hope is the same: I get this and everything becomes easier or better. Flynn even uses the word “magic” to describe this hoped-for effect.

But technology doesn’t work that way. It’s not magic. It’s only a tool.

It was nice to hear someone else say that. And a bit of synchronicity to hear that old podcast episode cover the exact same thing I had just written about.

On one side note, that was a good podcast episode. Flynn suggests that everyone do an audit of the tools they currently own and be really honest about how many they actually use, how many they actually need, and how much money they are paying for tools which are subscription-based.

On a second side note, I originally planned to write about product standards today. That’s a post I still intend to write.

Mindset Monday: What is being accomplished?

How it started

The other day I was talking to a small business owner and a couple of the small business’s employees. We were discussing local business, small business, and business in general.

I said that when it comes to technology and people with technological skills, I think there’s a question which is impolite but still important.

How many apps do we actually need?

Not as individuals, but rather as users existing within a technological system. Specifically smartphone apps, which seems to be most of what programming and company announcements and startups are focused on currently, “and we created a new app for that,” how many apps do we actually need?

The small business owner replied that he has about fifteen apps to run his business and it seems like each one has its own associated fee.

How it’s going, now that I’ve thought more about this

Fifteen apps, which I’ll use as a starting point. Fifteen user IDs, fifteen passwords, fifteen apps to keep updated, fifteen apps which can break if an update goes wrong, and so on.

No, I’m not advocating for one-stop-shopping all-in-one apps that contain everything and do everything. Those work wonderfully until that one things breaks and then everything breaks. That’s why I stopped using PDAs back in the Palm Pilot days.

What I am advocating is for all of us, myself included, to stop and look at the technology we use from time to time. How much of what I use or have downloaded or installed is to monitor or fix a potential problem created by something else? Or if the potential problem isn’t directly created by something else, how much of it is created by my bad habits using something I already have?

What is actually being accomplished?

Technician Tuesday: I’ll stick with the old(er), thank you very much.

The Early Days.

I started playing with cameras over three decades ago. At that time, it was only film and 1600 speed 35 mm seemed like a revelation. Yes, it was grainy, but you could shoot indoors without a flash!

Even Then I Was a Curmudgeon.

Later came the digital cameras. I stuck with point and shoot film cameras for the first few years of digital cameras. I didn’t like the limitations of ISO 100 film (only outdoors on a sunny day and if you’re indoors you’d better have a really good flash) and early digital cameras went back to the same limitations.

Eventually I got a DSLR, which was exactly what it said: a Digital version of a Single Lens Reflex camera. It took photographs and saved them to a memory card, but it had the same SLR mechanics. There’s a mirror that lets you look through the lens from the viewfinder, until you actually take a picture. Then the apertures close, the mirror flips up, the apertures open long enough to expose the sensor (CCD in DSLRs, film in the original SLRs), the apertures close and mirror flips down, and then the apertures open and you’re back to looking through the lens via the viewfinder.

I’m Still Opinionated.

The last couple years I’ve seen advertisements for mirrorless cameras. I did some research over the weekend and found out they can use different lenses like SLRs and DSLRs, but they show the view through the lens digitally on the back display screen. In other words, if the power’s not on and the circuitry isn’t talking exactly right, there’s no good way to know exactly what the lens of a mirrorless camera is seeing.

However, they can be smaller than DSLRs.

And then there’s video. The original SLRs did not take videos at all. That was not ever their purpose. The original DSLRs did not take videos either. There are many DSLRs now which do take videos. From what I read, that required quite a bit of work for camera manufacturers to figure out. Again, the original DSLRs were Digital SLRS, and SLRs were still photographs only.

I’m Happy Where I Am. There’s Still Lots to Learn and Explore.

So, am I going to get a mirrorless camera? I don’t expect to get one, not any time in the near future. My DSLRs are working just fine for me. And they still have many depths I haven’t plumbed.

I know video cameras purpose built for video are a whole different world. Just the lenses for those cameras seems to be a while different world. Ugh. I’ll explore those worlds another day.

Mindset Monday: technology is not always the first answer.

There are some things I’m adept at on the computer. If I already know what I want to say, I can open up a word processor program and type it out, add some basic formatting, check it over and print it out. I think this is not a terribly amazing skill. But I’ve had several people tell me I do in 30 minutes what would take them hours.

There are times when technology is not the first answer. There are times when reaching for a computer or tablet or phone will hinder the creative process.

Reaching for a computer, tablet, or phone first will also make it easier to focus on the “how?” instead of more important questions like “why?” Also, “What’s my goal?” And, “Do I even know my goal?”

This is also not a new problem. Over 20 years ago I took a college technical drawing class. The first half of the class (much to my classmates’ annoyance) was sketching by hand. The professor explained they had heard from multiple recruiters about the lack of non-computer-aided sketching skills. More specifically, it really interrupts a brainstorming session if instead of reaching for a napkin or piece of paper to sketch on, the person with the idea says “Hang on, I’ll go to my computer and . . . “

Dan Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin – Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, Expanded Edition was published all the way back in 2009. (ISBN 978-1-59184-306-1) Again, this is not a new problem.

Technician Tuesday: Checking out email lists and opt-in forms (2022 Aug 09)

My previous post was titled Mindset Monday. Tuesdays I am reserving for actual technical information, usually something I’ve learned during the week. Maybe it will help you, the reader. Maybe it won’t.

I write what I’ve learned because it helps me organize my own thoughts. Additionally, it’s a a record of what I’ve learned for future reference. Which is better than trying to keep everything packed in my head. I don’t need to write down every button push or feature. That’s what the manual is for. I write down what works for me.

Today I’m writing about email lists and opt-in forms on a blog (like this one). I’ve gon through a few plug-ins and looked at various options. There are a lot of ways to create forms on a blog. Each of those ways seems to require setting up a separate account on a marketing site or email list site. Furthermore, I will say that user information is something which carries a responsibilities with it. The more information I gather, the more responsibility I’ll have. The more I spread that information around to other sites, the more responsibility I have to keep track of what information I’m gathering and who I’m sharing it with.

Every bit of stuff on the internet requires money at some point. Money pays for the server it’s hosted on. And money pays for the bandwidth to access the information on the server. Also, money pays for the people who maintain the servers, software, databases, and physical communications lines.

Every site and service I add on to whatever I’m using is paid for in some way. That’s true of this blog, my computer, my digital camera, and anything else. I either pay for it with money, or I pay for it with access to my information. (I do know about free open source software, FOSS, and I support people who do that. Even there, services are only free because someone else decided to pay with their own time and effort and money to create something free for the rest of us.) Until I better understand what various sites will be doing with the information I give them, I’ll leave out opt-in lists.

Regarding opt-ins and email lists: gathering user information means the gatherer has to be aware of how they’re keeping and sharing that user information.

I know, if you’re looking for information about how to use technology you probably wanted a quick set-up guide. This blog isn’t for that. The quicker the set-up, the easier the sign-up, the more that’s offered for free, the higher the likelihood there will be a price in time or money or unexpected risk to be paid later. That’s how you wind up with your technology using you, instead of you using your technology.