Computers and information systems are fascinating subjects to study, not just from a technology standpoint, but from a social and psychological standpoint as well. The longer I work, the more I notice certain patterns of thought and behaviours that seem to repeatedly appear when it comes to using computers and technology.
The simple fact is we attach different values to the use of computers than our use of other technologies. For example, it's a given, understood rule that owning an automobile is going to involve weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly costs to continue using. We have to buy gas, we have to register the car, we have to pay insurance, rotate the tires, replace filters and belts, change the oil--to say nothing of upkeep costs for major repairs when they happen. We don't bat an eye when we get a car mechanic bill for $400.00 dollars in June, and another one for $250.00 in October. We recognize that it's just a necessity for the vehicle to continue operating properly.
Yet it seems to me that our use of computers is almost the exact opposite. Aside from paying our monthly Internet service fee and power bill to keep the computer turned on, we seem to have this mind set that using a computer should otherwise be "free." We don't think twice about spending money to keep our cars running, but if somebody tells us that we really should upgrade our system, because it will work better, and will make us more productive, we often think it's a waste of money. "My computer's barely two years old, I need to upgrade already?"
I think part of this mind set stems from the fact that quite frankly, we're just not used to the pace at which microprocessor technologies advance. A car is typically a twenty-year investment; a toaster is fifteen, a lawn mower twenty or thirty, a quality bicycle fifteen years. Your average laptop computer has a lifespan of five years, desktops just over four. Let's think about that--for the amount of money it costs relative to its length of use, a computer is one of the shortest-term investments we make. Oh, you'll always hear stories about some guy that's still running his 1992 Pentium Pro PC, or some die-hard Mac user who's clinging desperately to their Indigo iMac G3. But they're the exception, not the norm; the extreme outliers on the bell curve.
In realistic terms, computers age at about a 4-1 ratio from cars. In other words, a one-year-old computer is the quivalent of a four-year-old car, a two-year-old computer is the equivalent of an eight-year-old car, and so on. People often complain that their four- or five-year old computer "just doesn't run like it used to," when in automobile terms their computer is the equivalent of an '89 Chevy Corsica. Yeah, it probably still gets you from Point A to Point B, but it ain't gonna do it very fast, and it certainly ain't gonna do it in style.
I guess the point of this blog post is to simply accept change. To recognize that spending money on a computer isn't always thievery by Microsoft, Intel, Dell, HP, Apple, or whoever. It's simply the price of progress, and if you want a 2010 BMW Z3 computing experience, there's a price to be paid.
-Steve