Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: communication

  • It Just Works!

    We all miss ya, Steve.

    Apple used to have the corner on the market of ”It just works” tech. 

    Now, no one does. 

    Apple products and services don’t always work as expected. (If you don’t believe that, you don’t use the Reminders app across multiple iOS devices and on a MacOS device running the latest software.) As Apple began to rely more and more on cloud technologies for linking devices and apps together, the control over the end-user experience that Steve Jobs mastered got further and further from the control of Apple’s engineers and designers.

    And I read a news article that a Tesla on auto-driving mode had run into a parked patrol car. That’s not good. Tesla’s are software with fast electric motors and wheels. But they are reliant upon a network, too. And they’re reliant upon a dependable power grid. If Mr. Musk was in Texas during the recent winter storm that took down much of the grid, he probably wasn’t able to silently tool around very much in one of his Model S’s. And if there’s any other software bug, well, those seem to get discovered IRL when a collision happens.

    I don’t use Android devices because I don’t trust Google. I don’t use PCs because although they will all run a variant of Windows, or Ubuntu Linux, or whatever, each part of the hardware may come from a different manufacturer and the parts don’t always play well together in terms of integration and optimization. 

    I’ve never been a Windows user because of its famous buggy, virus-and-hacker-prone-ness. (I do use it via Parallels on my Mac for one proprietary business software, TurboTax Business which does LLC and S-corp tax forms and only runs on Windows).

    Technology is built on dependencies. One piece depends on the other. An iPhone 12 Plus is just a fancy iPod if the GPE Network crawls, or you’re not near a reliable cell tower, or you can’t charge it up when the battery goes dead. You can build the world’s fastest CPU, but if the RAM bus won’t handle the throughput, or your heat sink and fans won’t cool it, there’s your bottleneck. You’ve got an expensive portable heater.

    For a long time now, the bottleneck has been the Network itself, because all of technology depends on reliable, repeatable network protocols for linking to other devices and communicating. When that breaks, the dependable, controllable world of technology becomes just as frustrating as Real Life. We don’t communicate well in it either.

  • Words Mean Things

    Words Mean Things

    My mind was blown and my soul touched by Amanda Gorman’s recitation of her poem, The Hill We Climb during yesterday’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of The United States. Her words were inspired and inspiring. Her tone, honest and hopeful. 

    The text of Miss Gorman’s poem can be found at a number of places online, here is one:

    https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0121-gorman-transcript-20210120-5ojxffrfb5cybjabhgiffgiyhi-story.html

    I encourage everyone to read it. I encourage everyone to soak it in and to soak in it.

    I happened to hear an interview last night with Miss Gorman during which she was asked if she visualized images as she created her poem. Her response, paraphrased, was that she is a poet working with words and text, not images. She went on to explain how she had wanted to re-elevate the simple power of the word after an era when words have been both misused and used to mistreat, and to mislead.

    This resonated with me. Words mean things. Words can build up or tear down. They can bind up invisible wounds or they can cut deeper than a sword to create jagged, pain-filled new ones. 

    Words are containers of meaning. Speakers and readers of the same language use abstract sounds or squiggles and marks on a page to transmit an invisible part of themselves to their hearers and readers. This transmission of oneself into another by the means of communication is an invitation to a shared world (or the casting out from one); a window to a shared reality (or a slammed door); a link that bridges the gap between two souls (or a wall of impediment). 

    Miss Gorman’s carefully chosen words, some of which I have excerpted below, are a blueprint of an America that I believe in. 

    I want to live in and be part of creating an America where:

    ”…we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.”

    ”Because being American is more than a pride we inherit; it’s the past we step into and how we repair it.”

    We each have a chance to step away from the brink and into a new way of speaking to and listening to one another. Though we are not all poets; we can, and we must, choose our words carefully, the ones we speak and the ones we listen to. After all, words mean things.