
A while back I logged on to Facebook and everything looked different. Sometime in the middle of the night the shamans and witch doctors in charge of the internet had snuck into my computer and installed a new and improved Facebook even though I didn’t ask for one.
I’m guessing a lot of you had the same experience.
It was like having a crew of interior designers and efficiency experts come into your house during the night and rearrange everything without asking you first. Your wallet and keys were no longer where you left them and your book shelves were rearranged and your sock drawer was now your underwear drawer and it was up to you to figure out where everything was now that a bunch of strangers had “improved” your life.
I didn’t like the new and improved version and after clicking on a few icons to figure out where everything was, I found that I could go back to “classic” Facebook and picked that option.
But the respite from an “improved” Facebook was only temporary.
I logged in the other day and once again Facebook looked different and I am now being told “classic” Facebook will no longer be available starting in September. So they gave me a choice and clearly I picked the wrong thing because they’re no longer giving me a choice.
And it’s not the first time this has happened.
A new and improved baseball website
Back when I was writing about the Royals for the Kansas City Star I used several baseball websites almost every day. One was an ESPN website that kept track of team stats and made comparisons easy.
For instance: you could look at a team’s Earned Run Average and then break that number down and see ERA by starting pitchers and ERA by relievers. That helped your understanding of a team’s strengths and weaknesses. Maybe a team could get a lead, but their bullpen wasn’t good enough to hold it and comparing the numbers would reveal that.
Then someone decided to “improve” that website and those comparisons are no longer available. These days I rarely use that website because the improved version isn’t nearly as informative as the old one.
Adobe Photoshop
In order to produce usable cartoon images, I need Photoshop on my laptop. These days you can’t buy Photoshop, you rent it by the month. Someone figured out they could make way more money if you paid them 12 times a year instead of once.
One of the supposed advantages of this system is “support” which means every once in a while someone does an update whether you want it or not.
No way to know for sure because Dorothy had an easier time getting an interview with the Wizard of Oz than we do getting a live human being on the phone so we can ask a question, but it sometimes seems an “update” knocks out all my Photoshop preferences and I’ve got to figure out how to get things back to normal.
After one update my computer would no longer recognize my scanner which led to a 35-minute panic attack until another update seemed to fix the problem and I say “seemed” because the Wizard of Oz wasn’t taking calls that day.
Microsoft Word
I write using Microsoft Word 2010 and I’m now getting messages that Microsoft will no longer “support” that program and if it means they won’t sneak in and fix things I don’t need fixed it would be a dream come true.
If what I found on the internet is accurate – and they never lie on the internet, do they? – I could dump my old Word program which I paid for once 10 years ago and go to the new Office 365 which…surprise, surprise…is a “subscription model” which is available for $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year.
So why all this improvement we didn’t ask for?
Because someone’s job depends on it.
They have to keep tinkering and changing things because if the people who do this stuff said Word or Photoshop or Facebook were just fine the way they were and just needed to be maintained and any further improvement would just be cosmetic, those people would be out of a job.
Most of us have probably had a boss or supervisor who made unnecessary changes in our work or offer unneeded advice; those people are justifying their paychecks.
If you’ve never heard of “planned obsolescence” here’s a definition:
“A policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of nondurable materials.”
In other words: if it ain’t broke, break it.
omg, don't get me started... some mornings I think these changes are a good thing, keeps my brain active and learning new things - and then there are those mornings when I've had a bit too much of that magic brown liquid to drink the night before and I'm ready to throw the whole thing out the window.
It's the American way *snicker*