Hugh MacLeod
Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
April 29, 2005
Agree/Disagree?
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With technology it is possible to achieve a lot of interesting things. But this can take time. And time can be a problem. So yes, technological problems do exist. Another problem is the development and implementation of technologies. People make mistakes and there will always be bugs.
Well, if there are no technical problems, there are no problems at all. But perhaps you can say that technical problems is too specific, and that they are problems in life? Cultural problems?
Ahh, excellent brainteaser to get the gray matter working after a nice two hour lunch on Cote d’Azur!
Yes, technological problems exist if you’re lazy.
No, they can be made to disappear by challenging the assumptions, never taking the original ‘problem’ at face value.
Say you told me you wanted a “car to take you from Paris to Berlin in two hours” (that’s 1052 km, mostly motorway though, some traffic, some radar traps).
Take problem as stated: Huge problem, technological and otherwise.
Fuck the assumptions: “Why car?” -> shrug of shoulders -> “Call Air France!” No problem.
alternatively,
“Why two hours?” -> “Driving is boring!” -> “Here are the keys to Hugh’s Ferrari Spyder and a nice lunch hamper, enjoy!” No problem.
In extensis it could be applied to anything. Just apply “no limits” to your imagination
Crikey, Hugh — slow down! I thought I’d caught up with you, but I’ve been over at Sig’s and come back and find you’re still at it — this being on the other side of the world can be a pain (as he slides into fitful sleep at the keyboard …)
Sig (previous comment) notes something very familiar to me — often people phrase their problem in terms of a potential solution, unconsciously narrowing their view. Rephrase the problem correctly, and other possibilities become more easily apparent.
As for technological problems (and this is, I think, the question you were really asking) — are not the problems more to do with people (e.g. cultural) than with technology? Was it Jules Verne who said that if you (a person) can imagine it then it will eventually come into existence? Longer term I don’t think there are technological problems, only problems that we (the people) have with the technology.
talking (typing) out loud here — don’t expect coherent thought process..
Technical knowledge and technology is essentially about expanding a sphere of contol over a process or object. It is also about making that control repeatable and knowable and transmitable to others without a direct relationship. Write the manual, pass it along. You want the answers it’s in the book.
Technological problems exist to the extent that the system of control encounters something outside of it’s sphere of control — it then become a problem — which the technologically minded immediately looks for a new technical adaption or invention to then bring into the current control/technical contol system.
This I think contrasts with culture, which isn’t about technical solutions but balance between various interests and knowledge bases. Culture is also an system of controlling the envirnment, but not through process but through relationships.
At a base level the technological/cultural question is the same thing — control of the environment and of the direction in time of the aims of that control.
Growth of technological systems reach a point of “lockout”, when development of the current system of control make in inherently almost impossible to readjust to another technical system because of the sheer weight and expense put into the current one. So any tehnical answer will therefore create it’s own problem eventually.
Forget IT for a second and think of, I don’t know..martial arts. Someone develops a technique for kicking really well. He impresses people and his students codify what he does and make it a method — a technology of fighting. And everyone gets really good at kicking well. They think they are invinciable. Kicking is the answer to everything, and becaus eof the technology of this style you expend lots of energy learning how tro kick according to this method. One day our invincible kickers meet a really good wrestler who negates everything they can do with ease and gives ‘em a good beating. What do the kickers do? — Say “Hey, that guy didn’t kick — unfair!” (ignore problem, blame someone else, outside of system of technical control so can’t understand problem), “Our kicks were useless!” (either reinvent how to kick in light of new knowledge form encounter with wrestler; or give up kicks as a technique because they are now deemed “worthless”?)..lots of analogies here..
OK going to stop thinking out loud..technological problems do exist, but they coem from the technology themselves…
I’d say, of course there are technological problems. But they’re not *the* problems. Those are social, mental. I’ve been interested in organization/categorization (of everything; ideas, things, people) for a while. The problem has not been technology — though there’s plenty of work to be done there — instead *the problem* is getting people to stop focusing on strictly hierarchical structures.
That’s just one example. Technology will come to be adopted, but only if the social, mental blocks come down first.
An aside: people seem to associate “technology”, the phrase with new/digital. That’s just silly. A hammer is technology. Ditto paper. Ditto forks.
So, if people think you can’t eat with anything but chopsticks, your fingers or a spoon, then developing a better utensil is not a technological problem(/solution). The real problem is getting people to see that there may be a better way to eat is the problem. And as Galdwell preaches, this is hardly ever something that innovators can accomplish. It’s the connector-mavens that do this.
i.e. Technological problems are hardly ever only so. This why having a good idea, good product, whatever, is just not enough. You have to find the underlying social problem and talk in its terms. The technological problem will be easy in comparison.
agree…
there are always technological “challenges” — that is the fun part…
there are always religions of technology “problems” — that is the not fun part…
technological agnostism (right tool/right way/right solution) is the cure that helps address both — imho
Technological problems exist, but they should be irrelevant to everyone other than the builders of technology. They become relevant to other people, when a piece of technology falls just short of solving a real problem they have. If some widget solves a problem for someone, then that person has no technological problems with the widget. If widget doesn’t solve the problem at all then there still isn’t a technological problem: the person doesn’t use the widget. Technological problems manifest when the widget almost solves the problem.
Technological problems do exist. My view may be tainted since I’m a technical guy who works in the trenches. The suits are the ones who’s answer to this question really matters.
I like what Sig said about other options but I think that lazy is a strong word. If the problem is getting from point A to B then maybe there are 3 or 4 ways to do that but there are times when throwing out assumptions does you no good. Sometimes the technology may not exist to execute a task within the constraints of the job.
I can imagine a day when we have wireless power but that doesn’t mean I can stop charging the battery in my cell phone right now.
technology is as smart as its user.
if you try to use techology above your knowlegde the chance you will get errors is high, because techology itself has no knowlwgde. a user who will increase the knowlegde will get smarter. the learned knowlegde will than make user smarter, but also the technology, because the user can be more advanced.
1 + 1 = 2
1 + 1 = 5 — 3
Sorry Hugh, I have to disagree with you here. Technical problems exist.
I think what you are getting at is that all problems arise from basic human desires that usually have little to do with technology.
Let’s say you’d like to walk on the surface of Mars. There are many definite technical problems that need to be overcome to fulfill that desire, such as keeping a person alive in a spacecraft long enough to survive the trip, propelling the vehicle to its destination, and landing it on the surface.
There are also definite political and cultural problems. You must, among other things, convince somebody or organization with the means to send you to Mars to do it, for example.
Both types, technological and cultural, are real problems. Your desire to walk on Mars is, however, all yours.
Technical problems most certainly exist, and they can determine what kind of culture developes, too.
As an example, Live Journal ( http://www.livejournal.com/ ) allow “friends’ lists”, which gives you a page to monitor all your friends’ journals, (not to mention RSS feeds). This means you should notice all your friends’ posts without needing to go to their journal’s. You can also receive email-alerts when you get replies to your journal, as well as replies to any replies you’ve made in other journals.
Full-featured you might think, except that format more or less ensures threads on a topic will peter out within a day or two — unless two or more people keep endlessly replying to each other.
The result is mostly off-the-top-of-my-head discussions, rather than ones made up of thoughts that’ve been mulled over for a day or two.
So, on Live Journal, the culture is molded by the technology, and if you consider discussions ending in a day or two to be a problem, then it has a problem — one that’s entirely due to its technology. (Simple email lists are an example of a technology without this problem — everybody on the list gets every post and every reply.)
I’ll grab the invitation to spin the open question… sure there are technological problems, meaning that there are problems created by technology, and/or meaning that there are situations in which technological approaches to solutions are considered to be either the accelerator of the solution or the inhibitor!
I’ll also volunteer that “technical” and “technological” are not the same thing, and as soon as we stress the “-logical” we’re moving in on the aspect that points more at decisions to use the tool than at the tool itself. The decision to use the tool might be validated or might be corrupted by the characteristics of the tool itself.
I’d say a technological problem that we all know about is the situation in which we work to try to adapt (by configuration and/or by usage) the tool to the characteristics that we think the *solution* should have. How do we go about deciding that a tool fits the characteristics? The biggest mistake we might make is in thinking that the tool *is* the solution, instead of thinking that the tool can *support* the solution. When we make that mistake, we usually shrink the problem to the shape of the tool, risking putting the cart in front of the horse. But sure, it’s also possible to have a problem for which the solution really needed is to have a tool instead of not having one! There are plenty of those problems to go around. Ask any designer…
Hugh: is the statement in question an actual observation that you had, or just a CCC — calculated controversy catalyst?
What, Keith, are those the only two options I’m allowed?
Technological solutions don’t exist.
Agree/Disagree?
There are no technical problems, only the failure of management to expect that there will be techincal problems.
Technological problems will always exists because “solving the problem” stops the instant the marginal benefit falls below that of some other greater institutional/organizational/personal need.
Re technical vs technological. I agree they are different. My take:
Technical relates to techniques & trickyness. Technical problems are problems that go beyond the simplistic, and require some application of thought and technique to solve. Technical problems DO exist, but are rarely impossible to solve, especially if one thinks outside the square.
Technological problems relate to technology. As everyone else hinted, genuine technological problems only exist if the solver has a blinkered world-view. Sure it can cost a lot to solve a technological problem, but they can always be solved. In my world (software development) ‘unsolvable’ technical problems usually come down to a poorly defined scope and a reluctance to pony up the time (and therefore money) to do something correctly with the most appropriate* technology.
*Or preselecting a technology (Microsoft) based on unreasonable bias (corporate policy).
Re-reading my comment, I think I just realised what Hugh is getting at:
»> Technological problems do not exist, cultural problems do.
Too many times in my industry (which provides services to EVERY industry) we are stumped by technological problems created because of the customer’s culture. When a problem would be solved by an ASP.NET solution, we get told “no, sorry, we’re a Mac house”. When a problem could be solved by Java, we get the “no, sorry, we only use Compaq hardware running Microsoft”.
Or maybe I’m looking at it too technologically?
right ben, exactly
Agree! problems are just psychological. Even worse… define “problem”!