Saying Nothing in Stereo. Tools as Novella.

A large section of the internet today reminds me of the guy at your high school in 1984, out in the student parking lot, talking endlessly about the awesome new stereo in his red Camaro Z28. He spends much more time in that parking lot showing everyone his massive kicker box and bad ass set of tweeters than he does actually using them.

And when he does use them, it’s primarily so everyone else can hear it.

You know this guy. In fact, you might have been this guy, or girl (Sony made pink Walkmans). I’m sure at some point I might have been this guy, but about ten years down the road.

The other day I gave my used iPod Nano to my 8 year old nephew as an unexpected gift.  

His first response was, “Cool!  Let’s put some songs on it!”  

Shockingly, he didn’t immediately ask me whether it had Ken Burns Effect styling in the menus.  When he noticed that it switched to landscape mode, 400 words didn’t flow out of his mouth.  If I remember right he just looked at me and said, “Nice.”  I also observed that he didn’t run off right away to write an outraged blog post about the lack of FireWire-based charging.

He wanted to go use it right away.  For music.

It only takes a few moments observing children using our latest technology to realize that those of us in the 25 to 45 age bracket (those over 45 rarely even know where the “ON” button is, studies show) have it all wrong.  We’re hung up on all this wizardry because it’s something shiny and new.  The reality is that we’re actually the children in this story. Most of the time our own children simply get use out of these devices, while we tinker around on the edges.  While we’re looking to create a narrative out of the design, or the specs, they’re looking for the product’s intended purpose: usage.

Remember your reaction the first time you saw the penguins at the zoo?  That’s it.  Same human wiring. 

On some level technology freaks us all out. It’s what happens when human beings (adult, the overthinking ones) are confronted with new stuff, new ideas. Especially with communication devices. These often force us to think about allowing other humans to do their own thing, which could result in having to acknowledge weird ideas that exist outside our normal zone. 

So we want to talk about it.  A lot.

Johann Gutenberg – His press was a revolution at the time, to put it lightly. He spent about a decade struggling on it in secret before it was ready to work properly. When it was finally functional Gutenberg didn’t immediately print out a guide on how to use the printing press itself. He printed a poem, then church materials and possibly some Latin texts, at least according to most accounts. I’m somewhat amazed by this, although I wasn’t there so I’ll never know. There’s at least an outside chance he printed that guide. But the bottom line is that I haven’t heard any of my friends mention Johann Gutenberg’s name in the past ten years. They have read a lot of magazines though.

Alexander Graham Bell – Think back to 1876 (you weren’t alive, but just try), when Bell called to Watson on the first telephone call.  Wild stuff. I’m sure it took many years post-invention for the public to stop going crazy about the new technology and simply start making calls to each other. Today we don’t pick up the phone, dial our friend, then talk for 90 minutes about how we got the phone to deliver our voice all the way to California from Indianapolis. We just conduct our business. That’s a good thing.

Try to imagine right now an entire blog, updated 24/7, with ten authors dedicated completely to your (or your parents, since you don’t have one) home phone.  Yeah, that one.  The one with the cord going to the wall.  Post after post every day about how you can get a dial tone when you pick up the receiver, how if you push Flash it switches to a different call, the Top Ten Ways You Can Use Memory Dial to Organize Your Life, etc.  Sounds like a pretty terrible blog, doesn’t it?

Now you know how I feel. 

Think this all sounds ridiculous?  You’re saying, “But Dave, I love reading all my tech blogs every day, even if they all publish the same story over and over.  You’re cramping my style, bro. Why are you trying to squash my mojo?

Because you’re wasting time at work.  That’s what this is.  It’s a time sink.  And – even if only transitively – you’re clogging up my internet with a lot of unnecessary words.  Words that you, I, and everyone else could allocate to other stuff.  Other stuff like say…stem cell research. Or comedy.

But there’s no way you could possibly be in this category, right?  You’re not stuck in the glow of tech, you’re above that.  That’s somebody else’s problem.  No. I’d bet against it. I’d bet you just haven’t thought it out, watch this video:

 

That commecial comes off as pretty silly in 2008, doesn’t it?  A commercial celebrating electronic switching?  Switching as in how the phone lines route data?  

Electronic switches. Fascinating. And they’re installing them at a rate of ONE PER BUSINESS DAY!

(1980 Bell installers FTW)

The kid in the commercial is you, 1980 version.  Or maybe you’re the dad. I haven’t run it through the rules of analogy. Maybe I’m the guy actually on the phone as they walk by. Whatever. Either way, we were “taking your telephone into the 21st Century” by upgrading the phone line.  Words, pictures, numbers. The birth of Caller ID, Call Waiting, and other phone services. It was a pretty big deal.  Was.  Now it’s not.

I could talk about Twitter or any other of an endless number of tools or Web 2.0 services, but let’s just take WordPress as one quick example of this happening right now.  

Stating the case: I’m pretty sure more blogs about WordPress and its various themes and plugins exist than actual blogs using it as software to, you know, write.  

Of course most of these WordPress blogs do use WordPress itself, so my argument is subject to a perverse black hole collapse onto itself if thought about too intensely (please don’t). And I can only say I’m “pretty sure,” because I haven’t yet read a Forrester Research study on the topic.  Until that happens, nobody can really know.

Believe me, I appreciate the fact that – when we need it – there is a great deal of information available on how to use WordPress.  I’ve learned from these resources many times. I am not impugning a continent here. But do a Google search for “WordPress themes” and you can click through to page 60 and still be at top-level results (I stopped at 60, feel free to keep going). Have you ever been past page 10 on Google? People rarely go past page 1 or 2.

Imagine the brain power going into all these WordPress sites. Brain power that could be used on anything, but is going into blogging widgetry. The time and effort, the late nights up toiling in PHP. The Photoshop crashes, the coffee binges, the evenings blown by in IM trying to get an answer from your friend in Canada doing the exact same thing. It’s all meant for you to use to set up your site, and 99% of the time – for free.

And at some point, after twenty straight days of tweaking themes and plugins and widgets and flimflams, you’re going to be left with one thing on WordPress: a piece of digital paper.  

No more, no less.  

You are supposed to write on it.

Something. Anything.

Just not 1000 words on how to use a hammer.

Because you would never write that in a million years. Right?

We are the generation that talks about technology. The next will actually use it.

 

 

Two images in this post used via Creative Commons License. Original laptop image can be found here, penguins at zoo image here.