Technology: The Art of the Now

The most common complaints I hear today about technology today is:

1. Cost
2. Planned Obsolescence
3. Unnecessary Features

I couldn’t agree more! But that’s about where my sympathy (if you would like to term it as such) ends. Perhaps one of the lost aspects about technology is that it’s constantly changing.

Let’s consider for a moment that the automobile has one major purposes: Getting you from Point A to Point B. This is a simple MO to accomplish.

Then, lets consider the Personal Computer. It’s purposes are endless – only limited by imagination. It’s a canvas of unlimited potential just waiting to be assembled into the masterpiece that you wish it to be.

Your PC may be best suited as a business productivity enhancer or perhaps a personal life organizer. It might be the repository for all things that are important to you or your company.

The similarities with a painting or sculpture end there.

Technology is a constantly changing masterpiece. Sometimes, it looses form and has to be rethought. Sometimes, it’s amazing in ways that you will only come to appreciate in time. The point is – it’s always changing.

Technology is, in fact, the Art of the Now.

Sure, it’s frustrating when you spend a ton of money on something that’s obsolete the minute you walk out the door and probably doesn’t even work right out of the box. It’s very similar to the buildings your firm designs. It’s not going to be perfect and do everything. It may be pretty, it may be functional, it may be somewhere in between.

Just like your clients, you must be keen to what your needs are. Stop trusting your computers will do what you want them to and ask the tough questions. Technologists are just now getting it and coming up to speed with this idea that their product won’t solve world hunger or put a stop to war. It happened to Architects at one point. Let’s do our part to educate the technologists of the world on their changing role. Tough love is the name of the game.