Last time I wrote about how our machines still don’t give us the time to think because those same machines inundate us with casual mind-fillers that at best distract us from the time we set aside to think, and at worst provide us an excuse to just not think because thinking requires effort we don’t want to exert. However, there’s another answer, too…one that happens to me all the time. For me, these machines are not designed nor built well enough and force me to trouble-shoot…destroying both my “muse” and the time I’ve set aside to think. How familiar are these examples to you?
- I prepare to sketch a design idea, but spend 20 minutes fighting a printer in order to print out my basic grid
- I sit to record a guitar solo for 30 minutes, and end up fighting the Firewire connection to get my guitar into Logic
- I start writing some thoughts down and 15 minutes into a great essay I get the ‘beach ball of death’ and lose everything
You are spot-on Greg! I can’t think of a single computer peripheral that I have used over the last 25 years that has given me more trouble than a printer. I have networked cash registers with serial cables to PCs, I have produced live webcasts from the middle of parking lots and streets and old hotel ball rooms in the middle of the desert. I have connected people into videoconferences using all sorts of freeware, AOL accounts, and questionable network connections. Yet no single piece of technology has given me more frustration than the various printers that I have connected to my computers at home.