Irreal

In my The Times They Are A-changin’ post, I passed on the news that the last pager service in Japan was quitting operations. The BBC picked up the same news and decided to look at obsolete technology that is refusing to die.

First they looked at pagers and reported that although Japan has abandoned the technology, other countries still rely on them. As Johnathan Mantey suggested in a comment to my post, one of the largest users is the medical sector, especially hospitals. The BBC says that the UK’s National Health Service alone accounts for 10% of worldwide pager use and that 80 percent of UK hospitals still use them. Nevertheless, the NHS plans to phase them out by 2021.

Next up is checks. Although once ubiquitous, checks are mostly obsolete. The BBC says that the average US household (as of 2015) writes about 7 checks a month. That mirrors my own use almost exactly. Virtually every check we write is to one of two small shops that refuse to take credit cards. A number of countries have already done away with checks but they keep limping along in the US and UK.

Most surprising of all, tape cassettes for music not only haven’t died a well deserved death but are actually making a comeback. That’s surprising because their sound quality is terrible, they’re always breaking, and you need a dedicated device to play them. I blame their zombie-like refusal to die on hipsters and others who value trendiness over function.

Finally, there’s the fax machine. Ten years ago, Dilbert was already making fun of the idea of anyone using a fax machine but it’s another technology that refuses to die. Again, the UK’s NHS is a major enabler. They are the world’s largest buyer of fax machines and were recently prohibited from buying any more and told to phase them out by 2020. As hard as it is to believe, millions of faxes are sent everyday worldwide.

Take a look at the BBC article. It’s amusing and you’ll probably be surprised by all the technology that should be dead but just keeps lurching along.

In my What Happened at Boeing? post, I recounted some of the disturbing tales told by Matt Stoller of how a dysfunctional management team of Boeing succeeded in taking what was arguably the world’s foremost aircraft design and manufacturing company and turning it into a travesty of itself that produced a plane so flawed that it killed 346 people before it was grounded.

There’s a nice followup to Stoller’s post by Maureen Tkacik in The New Republic that provides a few more details on how bad that management was and how their decisions lead directly to the 737 MAX disaster. Whereas the old Boeing management all had aviation backgrounds and focused on building the best aircraft possible, the post-merger management were mostly finance people concerned solely with bean counting and politics.

A telling example of that was the McDonnell Douglas CEO at the time of the merger who, as Tkacik says, “…liked to use what he called the “Hollywood model” for dealing with engineers: Hire them for a few months when project deadlines are nigh, fire them when you need to make numbers.” Making the numbers was all the new management team cared about. Any management team has to care about fiscal matters, of course, but that shouldn’t be their sole concern, especially when lives are at stake.

Reading Tkacik’s account is a bit overwhelming as she goes over the myriad bad decisions made mostly to ensure that 737 pilots would not have to undergo simulator training to recertify for the 737 MAX. It’s daunting but well worth reading. Of course, engineers are already familiar with its lessons; it’s management that really needs to read her article.

Except for you young guys for whom they’re pretty much the same:

“Japan’s sole pager provider will end its services Tuesday, with the device, first introduced in the country half a century ago, made redundant by mobile phones.”

(Are we really being asked to be nostalgic about…pagers?!) https://t.co/L3mzj3IKi5

— Kontra (@counternotions) October 1, 2019

If you aren’t a fairly young person you almost certainly have first-hand knowledge of pagers. A colleague once described them to me as an electronic ball and chain. Unless you’re in the pager business, they won’t be missed. At all.

Of course, now cell phones are serving the ball and chain function but somehow it seems much less onerous. Perhaps because we all carry one anyway. I think it’s likely that anyone who doesn’t have a phone today is someone who doesn’t want one for some reason.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a pager in the US. A quick DuckDuckGo check reveals that there are, apparently, still some companies offering service. Who are the customers for these services? Has anyone seen one in the wild recently?

Back in June, I wrote about the light-mode/dark-mode controversy and the article by Adam Engst claiming—and citing substantiating research—that all the claims of dark mode’s superiority are nonsense and, in fact, the opposite of the truth. In particular, dark mode is not easier on the eyes, is not easier to read, and doesn’t lead to better comprehension. Contrariwise, it’s light mode that does all those things.

As a member of the elite despised light mode minority, I found his article gratifying but didn’t take it very seriously. Now, though, it’s time to fire another volley. Over at Gizmodo, Andrew Couts claims that Dark Mode Is for Suckers. You can tell by the title that Couts’ piece is a bit more hyperbolic than Angst’s evenhanded recitation of the research.

Nonetheless, Couts also cites research and backs up his rhetoric with facts. His explanation for the prevalence and preference for dark mode is fashion. People claim that dark mode looks better and who can argue with someone’s subjective judgment on such matters. Couts counters that fashion comes and goes and that what seems trendy today will seem horrible in a few years. He could have illustrated his argument with, say, avocado colored kitchen appliances but chose an even more terrifying example. Follow the link to see what it is. If you dare.

I stumbled upon a very interesting article from 2016 entitled The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think. The real point of the article, though, is “You are not the user.” Whatever you think about your users’ assumptions and skills is almost certainly wrong. It follows, therefore, that you shouldn’t use your own assumptions and skills in designing your user interface.

According to the article, the average developer has a higher IQ, higher literacy level, and is probably younger then most of their users. That’s a pretty breathtaking statement but the conclusion is not at all controversial: you can’t develop for yourself because, in technology, you are among the top elite.

A good part of the article is devoted to fleshing out the assertion that developers are in a special class as far as technology is concerned. Here are some of the major findings from a study of a several industrialized countries.

• 26% of adults can’t use computers at all.
• 14% of adults can perform only very simple tasks such as deleting an email.
• 29% of adults can perform only well defined tasks requiring little or no navigation such as finding all emails from John Smith.
• 26% of adults can perform underspecified tasks that require some interpretation and extra tools. An example of such a task is finding a document on a specific subject sent to you by John Smith in October of last year.
• 5% of adults can perform more complex, underspecified tasks requiring interpretation, extra tools, and monitoring of results. An example is finding the percentage of emails from John Smith that were about sustainability.

Developers are in that last small group. It’s easy to assume that most people have reasonable computer skills but it’s just not true. As the article points out, “You are not the user” is one of the hardest lessons to learn and accept. It’s an interesting article that expands on the above points and is well worth reading.