Bill Gates published an article about a week after I joined Microsoft, back at the close of the last century: Everyone, Anytime, Anywhere The next step for technology is universal access.  He mentions convergence in the opening sentence.  But that's not why I searched for this article... I searched for "Anywhere, Anytime" because I wanted to follow-up on the Zen comment in my convergence post.  Hmm, getting a little dizzy here.

Proposition: I think "Anytime, Anywhere" is a flawed idea.  I think that part of what feeds our souls is a variety of daily place and circumstance, allowing us to more easily process the world's stimuli by its differences. 

Ok, that's a bit highbrow, let's take the other extreme.  More concretely: I think my stress level has increased significantly since I got the ability to deal with email anywhere, anytime.  I'm no longer able to go an entire vacation, or weekend, or even evening, without checking my phone, or at least listening for its distinctive email sound.  If the phone is misplaced, I'm not at ease.  I put it in my pocket when I go into the back yard!  I know this is stupid, and is subtly maintaining a barrier to the natural world.  And sometimes I don't do it.  But it's a habit and I'll do it unless I consciously try not to.

Most professionals I know in the software/IT business have the ability to do literally all of their work from their laptop and phone.  So, if we're in a car, an airport, a hotel or our own bedroom... the possibility exists that we can be checking on a server job, finishing tomorrow's handouts, or just trying to keep ahead of our constant email flood.  Now we have blogs to read and podcasts to learn from! 

So the onus is completely on us: to understand the necessity of rest to maintain productive work habits, to account for this when planning and promising, and to be firm when asked to go further. It's not easy, and it's not usually a significant part of many professional's training.  I work with dozens of companies as a software consultant, and across the board the story's the same: everyone pays lip service to the honored "work/life balance" but few achieve it.

Devices that do it all

And what about making devices general purpose so they can do so much more?  The underlying promise is this: we can have whatever we want.  In marketing-speak, anything, anytime, anywhere.  And of course a software platform company will pursue this as a strategy, because it's the platform that enables it... new functions are only a download away. 

A technical problem

Theoretically, this ideas has a lot going for it.  But as we software developers know from long experience, practicality always has a way of constraining theory.  Much has been said about Moore's law, the salvation of CPU-hungry programs, continually layered one on the other.  But that salvation is always just out of reach... the same argument is argued repeatedly, and the software always wants for more.  True, there are many good systems built that deliver the promise.  But as time goes by, the software moves ahead and the hardware does not.  Worse, this is especially true for home users.  New software is adopted at an accelerated rate, with little of the governance so important to enterprise stability. 

What does that mean for us?  That a good part of the time, we live and work with poor performance, instability, and more or less constant frustration.  I used to reboot my phone at least once a day, typically just at the time when I want to make a call.  I eventually fixed it by deleting about 1/4 of my synchronized contacts (about a thousand accumulated over the years).  But I lived with it for too long before figuring it out, and now I don't have those contacts available.

And another thing.  When the device fails, then all of the functions are gone.  I learned this years ago with my combination TV-VCR and VCR-DVD and cassette-LP.  More recently, I tried using my phone as an MP3 player, but pausing to answer the phone is often unsuccessful... can't get the functions to respond fast enough.  Plus, it just uses up power I want in reserve for unexpectedly long phone calls.

A spiritual problem, with your help

Recently, I've begun to think there's something deeper than all of this.  I think it has to do with the "personality" of individual tools and our relationship to them.  I have a really strong feeling about this but I don't know if I can do the topic justice.  Maybe if there's anyone out there actually reading this fragmented diatribe, they'll help express this somewhat coherently.

I know Zen Buddhism explores this topic, or a similar one, in detail.  Pursuing mindfulness of ourselves in the world, we are encouraged to recognize and respect our relationship to the current moment, including all of the people, objects and sensations it entails.  For tools having one or few primary purposes, this relationship is direct, and intimate.  Stirring soup with a spoon, or hammering a nail, or sewing with needle and thread, or any of ten thousand other mundane acts, can each serve as a moment of meditation and presence.

What happens when the multiplicity of a tool's purpose grows so vast that each use requires we remember a series of steps... even when the steps become rote?  I don't know how easy it would be to examine this analytically.  But it's experiences and feelings that prompted me to consider this in the first place.  I like having different devices specialized to different purposes.  I think the example of how frustrating "universal remotes" may be a ready example.  (I've just heard that Logitech is supposed to have the holy grail of universals in its Harmony line).  But honestly, when I get a device with too many features, then too many features go unused.

So what?

So what's the point?  From a semi-related gathering of observations, I guess the common thread is to ask where is the humanity in the design of products that we bring into our lives?  Because in some subtle way at least, these products will affect our spirits.