The Latest Version

Wouldn’t you think that by version 9.0 you would have a product that works, consistently, permanently?
What if you bought a new house, but you had to wait for version 2.0 before it had a roof?
Version 3.0, now with working toilets!
Version 4.0, now with electricity!
That’s the high tech approach it seems: build something that doesn’t work, and then brazenly announce each new ‘version’ as if you were giving the poor saps that bought the earlier versions a big break.
And get this; you get to pay more for the mistakes they made with the original product!
Along similar lines, I don’t get it when the cable television company announces new technology and asks you to pay for it.
You are already paying a monthly fee, which allows them to run a profitable business, so where do they get off asking you to pay more for improvements to the service you are already paying them to provide?
Digital cable? Digital bull!
That high tech approach is starting to infect the rest of the world too.
What is the Big Dig, but the high-tech, no-fault approach to highway construction.
Ten years into the project and they haven’t figured out how to do what they were hired to do in the first place.
I’ve lost count, but I think we’re up to Big Dig 7.0, with no relief in sight.
The Space Shuttle Program is another example of the ‘don’t worry, we can charge the consumer more for it later’ approach to technological innovation.
Decades into the program and they’ve got astronauts acting like auto mechanics in space, floating around with glue guns and ceramic tiles.
The next ‘specialist’ to go up in the Space Shuttle will be the guy who does the flooring demos Saturday afternoons at Home Depot. After which he’ll show the astronauts how to build a deck on the Space Station.
Or maybe they’ll load those faulty Big Dig tunnels on to the Space Shuttle, and have the Home Depot guys do the repairs in space.
I always thought that engineers were people who figured out exactly how to do something, before the work began.
I always thought that simplicity was one of the characteristics of design excellence.
NASA seems to have a new breed of engineers: Engineers. 8.0
When I was a kid, I first heard the term ‘planned obsolescence’: the notion that companies like Ford and General Motors deliberately designed their vehicles to last ‘only so long’, so people would have to buy more cars.
I know Ford and GM have had their problems in the last few years, but I didn’t realize all their best engineers had been scooped up by NASA.
Of course the real masters, perhaps even the originators of modern, high-tech, no-fault, ain’t life grand engineering, are the folks from Microsoft.
They began with Windows, already an imitation of the Apple operating system, and have been wallpapering over their mistakes ever since.
They don’t even bother to come out with a new version every year anymore. And when they finally do, they don’t worry about it working. As long as it has a few new features that don’t work, a cool new name, a new box, and a new price, they’re good to go!
Of course it takes a year or so just to figure out what they should call the new operating system: the first rule of high tech engineering is ‘market first, figure it out later’.
I think they should work out a deal with one of the big bandage companies, maybe call the next version, Band-Aid-Brand Windows, because as soon it is released it requires ‘patches’. Patches are mini versions of various elements of the new operating system, that don’t work like they’re supposed to.
You usually don’t have to pay for the patches, they come free with the operating system.
A computer operating system is like a toll highway: once you are on, you can’t get off without paying the toll.
I think that they should take $5 off for every patch you have to install.
Maybe they should give money back on toll highways too, if the roads are in bad shape, and construction slows your travel time.
Which brings me to the Bush Administration’s ‘operating system’.
What version of the Iraq War are we on now: I’ve lost count?
They rushed to release the first version – Iraq:WMD, and they’ve been chasing their tails ever since.
They didn’t realize that the public had wised up over the years, and figured out how to get by without buying new versions of computers, or televisions, or wars.
So when the Pentagon released Iraq War Version 2.0: Fledgling Democracy, a lot of Republicans didn’t bother to rush out and buy it, they just stuck with the original.
Then they released Version 3.0: Stay the Course, and it was not compatible with either previous version.
Version 4.0: The Insurgency, soon followed, then 5.0, and soon the war between the various versions of the war was as violent as the war between the actual versions of the war, and the actual soldiers, and insurgents, and the rest.
Yeah, it’s a high tech mess: but I don’t let it get me down.
Whenever I run into these ‘compatibility’ issues, and my PC locks up and a message comes on the screen saying I need to get the latest security patch, I think back to simpler times: days when everything was Version 1.0 - take it or leave it!
The Edsel never made it Version 3.0
That guy with the wooden wings that jumped off the bridge, never got a chance to show us his newer, improved version.
I could buy a #2 lead pencil, but it was just the same as #1, as far as I could tell.
You could add a fancy seat, or put baseball cards on your spokes, but a bike was just a bike.
And the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich: how can you improve on that?