Humour

Taking IT in the Slow Lane

T A Balasubramanian on the virtues of not living life in a fast-forward mode

With his usual irreverent tales and quirky wisdom, Dr Don Jong steps in again to patch the many loopholes that he finds in the ever-troubled mind of Bobo Jitter, the CIO of Bazooka Corporation. Dubbed ‘The Oddfather’ because of the unusual remedies that he offers, Dr Jong has an enviable reputation for untangling the knots of technology’s side effects.

“Well Doc, I’ve been thinking about what you said all week—on losing my leisurely reading habits. It seems to me that there must be a way to recover that sense of having a lot of time on my hands. Surely, it is not inevitable that my hopping kangaroo mind will evolve out of control and make me incapable of reading—or doing any other activity—with the pleasing sense of slowness I used to enjoy?”

“Ah, so you are perturbed by the way evolution is progressing, eh?”

“Of course, Doc. Who wouldn’t be? All this relentless globalization, high-speed information exchange, anytime-anywhere computing, Internet penetration into people’s lives, touch-and-run technologies and the blurring of home and work computing—it creates an environment where high expectations and intense work schedules are the norm. In virtually everything I do, I get buffeted by seemingly uncoordinated changes—so much so that my threshold for stress is dropping steadily. On top of this, you tell me I won’t be able to get back to my old slothful way of doing things?”

“You can, of course get back to it, my boy.”

“And how do I do that?”

“By dropping out of the rat race,” says Dr Jong with a smile. “Take a measured appraisal of the chaos and shift into a different plane of existence.”

“What does that mean, Doc?”

“Permit me, then, to make an eloquent and convincing case. You could start by permitting yourself to challenge the conventional view that faster is better. In your own field, is it not true that while new generation computers keep getting faster, the new software programs keep getting slower? In decades of dealing with IT gizmos as a layman, I have never seen an exception to the rule that the new version will be slower than the old one. Mind you, I have heard countless software vendors promise that their forthcoming upgrade would be an exception, but it never is.”

“That’s right, Doc. The software becomes more complex each year and just keeps bloating up in size. What would take seconds to start becomes minutes in each upgrade.”

“You see? Newer technology is not necessarily faster—maybe it is more frustrating to install and start, but it certainly gives you time to think about other things. And nine times out of ten, there is no compelling reason to upgrade—other than the marketing pressure from the vendor. Whatever wonderful new features version 105 offers must be weighed against all of the flaws that new software inevitably contains.”

“Quite so ... of course, there are always bugs. True, there were bugs in the old version, but since it was smaller, there were not as many. Besides, you at least knew what the bugs were.”

“Now that is what progress is all about, Bobo. The latest version is likely to be infuriatingly buggy, slower than ever, difficult to learn, and prone to taking over your computer and make it exceedingly cranky. Then there is one more thing—you are expected to pay money for this privilege, too.”

“It makes sense not to upgrade at all, Doc.”

“Exactly. It is about time someone insists that we all put on the brakes—or at least check the instruments on the dashboard. What if you were to be presented with anecdotes, statistics and arguments that it makes sense to adopt an idle bystander’s position and stand opposed to the technology culture’s mad marathon of speed?”

“I would buy it any day, Doc.”

“Of course, IT has been a terrific booster of machine-to-machine communication, it has automated the steps of many processes and it has given happy CFOs many corporate cost efficiencies. However, as you swim between changes imposed by others and the high speed electronic stream of messages and interruptions at work, you feel that you have lost control over your natural way of working. Simply put, IT has no respect for humans and their ancient need for leisurely activity tuned to their slothful nature.”

“And how does that show up?”

“You can see it yourself. When it comes to making you effective—that is, letting you enjoy your own environment, giving you more time to do work, helping you to navigate services or find information—IT has been hopeless. So, although human beings are expected to switch nearly instantly between domains of thinking, activities and business rules, their computers provide few or no support to ease switching. The result is known as thrashing—that is, you are trying frantically to execute too many tasks at once without spending enough time to accomplish anything meaningful.”

“I am caught up in it, Doc. What choice do I have?”

“Well, first, break out of the Matrix-like illusion that you have no choice. Rediscover the pleasure of allowing everything its proper time. Release yourself from what Baudelaire denounced as ‘the horrible burden of time.’ It is time for you to become a devotee of slowness, Bobo. Join the Slow Lane.”

“The Slow Lane?”

“Yes. Everywhere you look, people are waking up to the folly of living in fast-forward and discovering that by slowing down judiciously they do everything better and enjoy everything more. The writer, Carl Honore, in his popular book, ‘In Praise of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed’ shows the way out, with inspiring examples. He says that the Slow Lane is essentially a state of mind. His life has a very clear Before and Now. Before, he was always trying to do more and more things in less and less time—it was all about speed and quantity. But in the Now, he likes to approach each thing seeking to do it as well as possible instead of as fast as possible. He says, ‘I no longer feel a slave to time. I feel like I have enough time for things and I don’t very often feel rushed—even though I have an exciting, full life.’ ”

“That is puzzling, Doc. An exciting life, but not rushed?”

“Well, look at my schedule, Bobo. I have a full day of exciting sessions with a dozen patients, but I never let you feel rushed, do I? It is, like Carl says, the trick of finding the right equilibrium and not being obsessively neurotic about time.”

“Ah, so you too, have been travelling on the Slow Lane?”

“But of course. I have reduced my TV-watching to a few hours a week, instead of a few hours a day. I also stopped wearing a watch, if you notice, which seems to make me less neurotic about time. I take breaks during the work day to relax, eat and do a bit of meditation, too—in between sessions.”

“Well, Doc, would it work in a hectic business like Bazooka? I mean, we have a company to run and the IT show needs to go on.”

“There’s place for a Slow Lane anywhere, my boy. I hear that IBM has launched a ‘slow e-mail’ movement, urging people to unplug and use less e-mail. And that comes from a computer giant, not a meditation school.”