speed

Saving So Much Time We’re Slower

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

So let me lay out a theory here that the effort to go faster with modern software can often make things slower. If you’re ready for “Steve Rants About Software,” here you go. If not, anyway, read on, trust me.

OK, let’s restate the thesis. I’m starting to think the way software makes things faster means, in time, everything runs slower.

Anyway, you’re probably used to using software for speed. This thing moves faster. This thing does a task for you. I unabashedly love spreadsheet programs, they are amazing. I’m not a patient person, so I get it.

The thing is that software (and other solutions, but I’m focusing on software) sometimes require other things to be done. You have to do a setup. Maybe you have to come up with a way to name some project demands. Perhaps there’s some extra data you have to enter to take advantage of all that super-fast software.

Sometimes, to take advantage of the speed you have to do more work. You probably see where this is going, but I’m going there anyway.

If you’re not careful, the extra work you do starts to add up. You have to check it and correct it. Choices start to interact, say you discover that your new form requires someone to sign off on it due to legal reasons. The time you save starts to get eaten up in other tasks to support being faster. You’re going faster but also going slower at the same time.

Ever check all the checkboxes, done all the stuff to make things work faster and somehow all that speed feels slower? You’re not going crazy. Well, you may be, but it’s understandable.

And all that’s extra normal work. What happens when a software update bricks your system? When a data import goes wrong? Your fast new system(s) cost time to fix as well, and know what, I’m not counting on that going well unless you’ve really run through the scenarios. Since disaster planning in software has become “figuring the SAAS system we have will always work,” I’m not exactly confident.

Thus my conclusion – past a certain point with software (and indeed, processes) your attempts to get speed end up slowing you down. Hell, in some cases, so much other work comes in that you might not need software. You would have less work without the thing that goes faster.

Again, you’re not losing your mind. Your mind just would like to get lost to get away from this.

I guarantee right now that on your job all your cool automated stuff you still go to talk to a person to work around things. You might be the person. You know why you do it – it’s faster than using the fast software.

Measuring return on investment is one thing, but measuring speed as a whole is important when you adopt new software. The value of software for speed is that everything is faster overall, you have to be careful to make sure the trade-offs are actually doing something. Otherwise the thing you sped up is faster and everything else is slowed down.

Judging by my usual online gathering of friends – a huge crowd of IT nerds – it’s starting to feel a lot slower out there.

Steven Savage

Way With Worlds: Society And Disaster Moving Faster

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Cheetah Speed Relaxing

Sometimes, conflicts and social breakdowns are all about speed. In fact I’d argue they’re all too often about speed – fast or slow.

  • That sudden change can be too sudden, and society falls apart. An invasion, a plague, a social breakdown can be damaging because they’re so damn fast.
  • Or you have a slow change is so slow that people adapt automatically and don’t even know there’s potential conflict brewing. Sure there’s technically a plague, but its spreading so slow (or slowed down by modern technology) no one ever realized they were courting an apocalypse.  Conflict averted and you never knew it.
  • That character who jumps to conclusions makes situations work.
  • That character who takes things slow doesn’t address problems in time, and conflict is born.

When it comes to conflict in your world, you have to ask how fast and how slow things are happening. In fact, speed – or the lack of it – may be the only reason a conflict exists. Too often people ignore solutions or go outright Leroy Jenkins on a problem and help assist the apocalypse.

So when you’re writing about the conflicts in your world you have to ask just how fast events are happening and how rapidly people are reacting. That determines what happens, or even if there is a conflict. You might even find, once you think about it, that there’s conflicts you never noticed in the societies you made all because of speed . . .

Here’s what to ask when it comes to speed and conflicts.

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