World of Shareware - Software Farm 2

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Text File | 1989-07-03 | 14.8 KB | 548 lines

2,528 words Reasoning and Rationalizing: A Cautionary Tale By MICHAEL FINLEY When I was a kid and computers were thought of as giant blinking mainframes housed at the Pentagon, or Univac, a popular question was, "Will computers ever think like people?" Today we finally know the answer, arrived at after hundreds of thousands of laboratory man-hours, light years of punch tape, and untold septillions of MIPS. The answer is, "God, let's hope not." I say this not because I'm worried about machines encroaching upon the sphere of human intellect. It's just that there are neighbordhoods on that sphere that you wouldn't advise some unsuspecting putty-complexioned appliance to visit. I'm thinking especially of the vast human propensity for rationalization -- logical statements in service to illogical objectives. Rather than point a finger at unfortunates with truly serious problems I offer my own story, illustrating in a modest way the kind of thinking we wouldn't want computers to approximate. As regards rationalizing buying computer stuff, I am as good an example of a bad example as you will find. You name it, I have rationalized buying it. In truth, my copywriting shop would be unconductable without computers. In the event of a permanent electricity crisis, my family and I would have to retrain for one of the career opportunities of the 1990s, like digging for canned goods. So, with one eye on my present needs and the other on the low-tech future, I have established a period museum of high-tech gizmos -- computers, printers, laptop, mouse, FAX, answering machine, printer buffer, surge protectors, lasers, expansion boards, modems, switchboxes, telephones, extra disk drives, cables, and a million diskettes of software, downloads, backups and junk. Somewhere at the core of this Gordian knot of technology, I am there, drawing breath in quick gulps, but exulting to the end in my technological "liberation." To others I'm afraid I look like the final panel in one of those ironic pulp science fiction stories of the 1950s, in which the narrow-focused nerd is punished for eternity by getting exactly what he wanted, Midas-like, absorbed by his own riches. I did not come to this pass by ingenuously weighing my needs and real intents, back when all this started. A callow youth, I was ready in those days to bear any burden in my ambition to communicate with the world. I figured my job wasn't to increase productivity, but to get the job done honestly and well. Type three drafts of a novel? No problem! Type a fourth draft! OK! Type a fifth draft? Oh, all right. A sixth? Oh.... So long as one doesn't know about computers, ordinary writing is bearable. When, after writing two multi-draft books, personal computers did hit the market, I was an early convert. I used to read Radio Shack brochures and marvel at the neat new machines for sale. I turned to my bride one day and said, "Red, I have to have one of these things. "Why?", she asked. "Why?" I was incredulous. "Amore, think of the productivity it will give my work," I explained. Instead of endlessly doing drafts, I can finish three projects in the time one now takes." (Note: The first critical translation computer rationalizers make is from laziness to productivity.) The die was cast. I shelled out a hard-earned $2,700 for my first micro, a dual drive, 64K Franklin Ace 1200 with a 10 cps daisywheel printer. For weeks I reveled in its editability, its ability to print out consecutive drafts without smudges, without White-Out, without tears. I was ecstatic. For a week or so. But I was soon aware that I was not quite done with my raids on productivity hardware. "Red," I said, "enamoradita, we need a modem." "Why?" "Why?" I asked incredulously, again. "Darling, a computer without a modem is like an unfinished symphony. Without an open channel to the world of information, I'm little more than a brain kept alive in a petrie dish. I'm not connecting, I'm not reaching out. I want arms, my darling, and legs." I didn't even tell her how lousy the spreadsheet that came bundled with the Franklin was. I was saving that for later. So I spent more money, bought a 300 bps modem. Then learned that the world of data that was out there charged by the minute like a taxicab. "Jewel, there's a brochure I'd like to show you, from the swell people at Compuserve. Using this service, I'll never have to visit the library again. We can sell our encyclopedias. Just think of the parking and gas costs we'll be saving. Our car will probably last another month because of this. We're talking the big one, sweets. Productivity City." Had to buy a printer buffer, of course -- that endless waiting till the printer was finished was undermining the enormous productivity gains I had made. Eventually upgraded from the Ace to an IBM XT-compatible. "Honey, this thing's got 10 times as much memory, and costs 65% what the other cost, counting inflation, and not counting all the new software I'll also have to buy. I'd be pretty stupid if I didn't go for this now, instead of waiting till prices go up next year." Got rid of the impact printer -- too slow, too noisy, a real productivity-killer. Bought a 24-pin daisywheel. This time Red wanted a change. "That thing sounds like you're running a veal packing plant down there," she said. Bought a laser printer instead. "The image quality is so stupendous," I told Red, "clients will say, omigod this is beautiful, and I can raise my rates again." I slapped the paper tray playfully. "This baby is like money in the bank," I said. There was still room for a FAX machine, squeezed between the answering machine and my new laptop. "Gotta get the laptop," I told Red. "I'm so busy being productive, why, the way things are going I'll never be able to take a vacation. This way I can take the laptop out to the cabin, you and the kids can have fun, and I'll be productive." Here is a brief list of excellent reasons for buying hardware or software. Try them out on your spouse today. 1) Saves steps. Instead of having to shut down XyWrite and booting up Lotus, you buy Framework III or Smart, and it's all there in one program. The beauty of step-saving as a rationale is that, if your spouse won't let you do it the software route, you can try hardware. "You're right, honey, what was I thinking. I'll just get the 2 megabyte memory upgrade instead and run XyWrite as a TSR program. What a fool I've been." 2) Pays for itself. You can even use Lotus to create complex-looking amortization and depreciation schedules, showing in columnular fashion how increased business and accelerated tax savings will return every dime you outlay. 3) Maintains parity with competition. This is great if your spouse hasn't much confidence in you to begin with. "Honey, technology is my edge. Lose that, and what do I have to offer? Not great for your own self-esteem, but a trump card in a tight game. 4. Takes business to 'higher level'. This one is great for stimulating the Lady Macbeth in all of us. Also known as the "An-Invisible-Man-can-rule-the-world! Ahahaha!" gambit. Chained the Kaypro and dBase II you'll never grow beyond simple data entry. But equipped with a blazing new Mac SE and Postscript printer, you'll be transformed from an implementer to an executive! 5. Prices may never be this low again. That's a good one! Practice before a mirror so you can keep a straight face. Throw in something about growing Japanese semiconductor market share and you're in like flint. 6. Let's make a deal. Tie your computer purchase (and its productivity and therefore income enhancements) to something your spouse wants. "Tell you what. First $100 I make with the new machine, we go shopping for that Hoover you've had your heart set on." 7. Give me 80 megabytes or give me death. This ploy recognizes that the two most effective motivators are irrational -- fear and guilt. You work hard for a living -- why add to that terrible burden, and possibly shortening your life expectancy, quite possibly dying alone, face mashed against a cold keyboard, by denying you a few easily-affordable, productivity-enhancing tools? I know what you're thinking -- this guy is buying everything in sight, he must print his own checks, I wish I had a nickel for every $100 he's blowing on hardware. Wrong -- despite my enormous gains in productivity, I still have hardly any money whatsoever. So when I call some mail order company and order a switchbox or a mouse, I put it on my credit card. That way, it will be weeks before the bill comes, and I'll have a head start on boosting my productivity a little bit more, and maybe someone will send me some money. And you don't have that heavy "I-just-bought-something-expensive" feeling. All you did was order the damn thing. You don't buy things till you pay for them. Here's another technique I picked up. Package arrives by UPS. You open it up, maybe you say, "Gee, I wonder what this could be." Inside is a new motherboard to upgrade your XT to a 386. Spouse gives you that forlorn weary-of-the-war look. You slap your forehead. "Oh, I know what this is, it's that 30-day trial deal, whereby you get to use it for a month, then you send it back. Hey, it'll be fun operating at 22 mh for 30 days." Let's say spouse isn't 100% convinced by all this. "You're not going to keep it then?" "Shoot, no. I'm just taking this company for a ride, baby. Oh, I suppose, if in the course of testing the thing I found that it enabled me to make staggering gains in productivity, then I might consider keeping it. But if that's so, then it pays for itself, right? Otherwise, it's no trouble at all to undo these eight screws at the back of the CPU box, disconnect every cable and wire, remove all the expansion boards, unsnap the motherboard, replace the new hard disk 60 mg hard disk I also ordered for 30 days' trial with the old one, pop the board back into the box, screw the pathetic old computer back together, and send the new one back to those poor saps. It's a win/win situation all the way." Spouse bought that, I'll bet. Support is important, especially when money is tight and margins are thin. My Red is a wonderful woman. Occasionally I look up from peeling apart the styrofoam surrounding some new acquisition and there she'll be, holding the five little ones in her arms, and everyone's crying quite a great deal, and some Woody Guthrie song playing on the radio. But even then I get those feelings of support from her. (I know two of those little ones, I think the other three are rentals.) Support, particularly unthinking support, is especially important when the subject is too technical to explain. Once Red wanted to know why it was worth $500 to upgrade from 4.77 mz to 12 mz chip speed. "Let's say you're writing an article at 4.77 mz," she said. "How will a faster chip speed help you finish the article any faster? How will it get you paid any faster?" Now, I could have sat her down, smiled benignly, and said "Red, Red, Red, Red, Red," and told her all the complicated reasons, arithmetic included, why an increase in CPU speed enhances productivity, which creates an incremental momentum that courses throughout the entire business enterprise, with the benefits trickling directly down to our household finances. A rising tide lifts all ships, rhododendron. But I'd already tried that once before. Instead I just say, "Sweetheart, it has nothing to do with CPU speed. It has to do with maintaining parity with the competition. What was it Poor Richard said, 'For want of a nail, the war was lost?' You save a little here, balk at a few pennies investment there, and one day you wake up and everyone else has gone on ahead, and left you behind, in the past, wallowing in obsolescence. Is that what you want, for us to go down in flames because we weren't forward-thinking enough to make a tiny investment in our future? Because if it is, I'll return this board right now, and get a refund, and we'll all of us -- you, me, the kids -- go shopping for metal detectors right now." Sometimes she gets this faraway look in her eyes, and says I've changed. Where is the romantic, sensitive soul who wanted to write novels under trees, for whom a crust of bread and ballpoint pen were sufficient unto heaven? Forget that, I say. That's individualism, I say. I let the whole litany fly. That's the Sixties talking, a loser's game, Old World craftsmanship, endangered species, Mustache Petes. "With my machines," I declare, "I can duplicate anything, a thousand times. The 21st Century is dawning, and my swivel chair is pointed toward the means of production. Behold my works and tremble!" I wasn't going to tell her just yet, but my mind's on fire with a big idea. "We're going national, corazon. I'm licensing my copywriting approach in a seventeen-city rollout starting August 1. Clients around the country can go to a Michael Finley copy agency and know they are getting treated exactly the same. Now doesn't that make the fellow with the pumpernikel look pathetic? I'm calling the chain 'Hack in the Box.[TM]' What do you think?" And so on, excelsior, scaling the heights of Mount Progress. A final word. The purpose of rationalizing computer purchases is never to be right, nor even to persuade. It is simply to get your own way, for the short-term, for the quick fix of a new, very important, one-time extraordinary expense. Throw in a philosophical quotation to buttress this argument -- if nothing else it deflects resentment away from oneself. "'In the long term,' Keynes said, 'we are dead.'" If every technique I have offered here comes to naught, if you throw your best arguments into the fray and they crash and burn, there is one last-ditch recourse, to be used only when all other attempts fail. Tell the truth. Put all your cards on the table. Admit that you have a problem, and that you are no longer in control of your life, that you are powerless in the face of junk mail and hand-wringing sales clerks. And get down on your knees and beg for this final indulgence today, and promise, upon the graves of your ancestors, that you will seek out and avail yourself of professional help, and the lovingkindness of a higher power... Tomorrow. Until then, productivity gains will be significant. And honey -- you're the greatest. .