Monday August 09, 2004

Time is going backwards

In a shameless display of my versatility, I have decided to talk about an annoyance of mine in a completely separate space. Last time, it was road-related angst. Now, my angst fits in the palm of my hand...

Before I get into that though, I need to do a bit of set up work so you will understand why this is so important to me.

It's all about time. You can tell which direction time is moving according to changes in entropy. Have you ever seen a video clip of a person jumping into a pool shown in reverse? The reason that gets a cheap laugh out of viewers is because natural entropy runs in the opposite direction. Thousands of drops of water fly from all directions into a small area of a sizable pool - the same area from which a person's body uncurls and hurls itself from the pool, and expertly lands on the diving board. That's odd. That's not the way we normally see things. You can tell that there is something wrong with time.

Similarly, but in exactly the reverse of the above, technology should show a decrease in entropy over time. Things should get easier. Each of us should exert more leverage on our environment, our lives, our reach into the world. Things get easier over time, less expensive, allowing more time for other pursuits.

Imagine if Paul Revere had today's technology. Wouldn't it be easier to simply send an email? Only if you have the infrastructure to support it. That's human progress. Technology getting more and more refined.

Given that set up, I consider my own cell phone. The Handspring Treo 600. What a fancy product of human progress this marvel promises to be.

I was excited to get a new cell phone about 6 months ago. I had the Nokia 3300. I liked that phone, but was forced to return it by the service provider. I took that opportunity to try out the Blackberry phones. Very nice! But have you ever read the license agreement? What a morass of a tangle of confusion that piece of work is! In essence, with my very limited brain power applied to the problem, I got from that document the following nuggets:

1. We reserve the right to read your mail
2. We reserve the right not to send you your mail if we don't like the contents
3. Even if we send you your email, you may not receive it
4. You do not have the right to receive your mail
5. You still have to pay us for the mail even if we choose not to send it to you

Recently, I have been having various connectivity and stability issues with my phone. I have had to reboot my phone on many occasions now. I don't like that. The film is running in reverse. I remember a time in which your involvement with a telephone was simply to pick up the handset and use in the most obvious way conceivable. I mean, provided you understand the point of the thing. Don't try to look through the tiny holes or anything. But once you see it used effectively by others a couple of times, you're in the zone. Working it like a pro.

So I talked to a few fellow Treo owners to see if they had similar issues with their phones. A couple of them had. "You have to install a patch", one said. A patch. Is that one of those paper labels with emergency numbers on it? I certainly don't have that on my phone, and I could see the danger of me walking about unwittingly with my phone, not knowing those emergency numbers.

Of course that isn't exactly what my friend was talking about and I did know that at the time, but I was resisting the realization of what that piece of information might mean for me. I have to install a patch. I have to administer my phone. I have to become root somehow and maybe update the BIOS. Perhaps install a new license key. Do I need to restart flexlm?

This is completely out of hand. On the way home today, I was considering whether it would be possible with PalmOS to do some simple scripting and stuff some automatic administration activities into a cron job. I want this thing to be automatic. I don't want to have to get some type of Palm Cellphone System Administrator Certification plaque on my wall to prove that I have graduated into the realm of being able to talk on my phone reliably. I want to pick it up and use it like one of the phones from many, many years ago and have the same quality of experience. I just want to walk around aimlessly as if I am too busy to be tethered to the wall as I talk to people. I want today's phone with yesterday's administration burden.

Maybe there is an administration service I should sign up for. Perhaps a cell phone hosting service - where they keep my cell phone and I can use it remotely from any land line I choose. Maybe I need to hire a college student with nothing better to do than administer a cell phone with internet connectivity through the very small keyboard. Or maybe I need to realize that this time technology is not about saving me time or increasing my influence while decreasing the energy I have to exert to gain that influence. This time, technology is about stuffing complex systems that have not yet withstood the test of time into the palm of my hand so I can administer it from any chair in my house.

I'm jumping out of the pool onto the diving board, but nobody seems to notice that something is wrong.