I work in software development.  One of the things we strive for in my line of work is the ability to incrementally and perpetually improve our product.  We have a word for it, Continuous Delivery.  In this model, if you sign up for a website or download an app or what have you, you anticipate UPDATES.  The web site will change over time, App on your phone will get new versions, sometimes monthly, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily.  This entire industry, this entire professional discipline, seems to be dedicated to constant improvement, constant evolution, and constant change.  And I get it, I understand why we do this more than most people do because it’s what I do for a living, but here’s the deal…  I’m sick of it.  I’m sick of having updates installed every single time I turn on my phone, every time I boot up my computer, every time I turn on my television or turn on my XBox or grab my iPad.  I literally experience 10-20 minutes (minimum) of software update time every single day.  And let’s be honest here, 99% of the time I do not notice any particular change.  I probably never encountered the bug that was fixed or I don’t use the software often enough to have discovered the new features they added or whatever.  Most of the time, an update is just a pain in the ass with little practical benefit.  And this is one of the reasons that I’ve started to prefer working with “obsolete” devices.  

What I mean by “obsolete” devices in this case is hardware or software that is NO LONGER BEING UPDATED.  As simple as that.  If you have this device or application, you have the final, completed, imperfect but unchanging version of that thing.  Think about it, in every other area of life other than Internet connected devices and computers, when you buy a thing, that’s the thing you bought.  You don’t buy a set of glassware and get an update delivered a week later that adds gold leaf to the rim.  You don’t buy a toaster and get a new update that let’s you now toast pizza (although, that might be awesome).  Point is, you can rely on these devices to behave the same way they did the last time you used them.  This is not true of self-updating technology.  Sometimes it just stops working.  Sometimes it has lost a feature you rely on and there is no way to get it back.  These are not problems you deal with if you are working with tech that doesn’t change.  And in some ways, it’s liberating.

The number of times I have decided I want to make music or write creatively or something and gotten sidetracked with installing 100 updates without ever getting to the thing I wanted to do is so high that I couldn’t begin to count them.  I’ve come to resent the little red notification circle on the icon, the “updates are available” message, the constant, unending, distracting, irritating, cycle of updating everything.  I just want to work.  Obsolete or unsupported software and devices simply don’t do that to you.  Ever.  They don’t get better, they don’t get worse, they simply are what they are.  You can pick them up and use them for what they can do and not use them for things they can’t do and they are the same as they were the last time you used them.

It’s wonderful.

It’s liberating.

It is how I wish most of my technology behaved.

Now you may be thinking “just turn off notifications” or “just ignore the updates” or whatever.  And yes, these are options, but here’s the deal.  Different pieces of software often depend on updates happening with other versions and often the updates are basically mandated.  Not only that, turning off all the notifications and stuff is like unsubscribing from spam mail lists, you just have to keep doing it over and over.  You’re never done with that either.  And there is always this nagging feeling that it’s a bad idea not to get the updates.  This is why tech that is done changing is so nice.  You can learn to accept the limitations, stay within it’s capabilities, and never make that decision.  I don’t want to make a bunch of decisions when I open my laptop, I want to make something.  

This is top of mind for me right now because I’ve been sitting in a tech conference at Normandale Community College today and (unlike home and work) I have access to decent Internet.  I’ve decided to take advantage of the situation to install all the updates to all the apps I have.  It’s insane.  Even with all the updates I do daily, I’ve still been busy updating shit for the last 5 hours.  Operating systems, virus definitions, applications, cloud drives, whatever.  So.  Much.  Shit.  I feel like I don’t even use my computer anymore, I just update it.  

Anyhow, now that I feel nice and updated, I’m going to attempt to use my computer to do something.  I don’t know what.  But after all the updating, I’m tired and I think maybe instead I will find something else to do.