Tom's Views

Dear [Mentat],

Well, this view [that we cannot easily rise above the limitations we inherit] is decreasing for now.  But with the emergence of   Evolutionary Psychology   and the discovery of the forces that are powerful influences over a person’s destiny, this idea may again come into vogue in the future [, as we discover more and more just how much our nature drives the amount of success we achieve].

I’m reminded of a discussion we had back in the 1990s.  I had received information on how the signals from radio station WWV work to convey time data to radio controlled clocks which are so popular these days.

The system involved the transmission of varying length 100 Hz. pulses to form binary coded decimal digits, that depict the current date and time.  Since one decimal digit takes four seconds to transmit, then in order to send a complete date and time stamp, this scheme requires a whole minute.

I remember you saying how antiquated you believed this system was because today, such information can easily be transmitted in only a few microseconds.  You felt that the government ought to replace it because much faster means are available today.

I took issue, saying that this system works very well – which it still does in fact.  While it may take more time to convey the data, its error rate, even over thousands of miles, is   very   low. Thus, unlike the faster packetizing methods one might use today, it requires no error correction software to decode, which lessens the cost of the receivers.  Then too, due to the simplistic nature of the scheme, the supporting equipment is very easy to troubleshoot and repair, since it contains very few specialized components, which further increases the reliability of the whole system.  The system thus, does what it was designed to do very well.  So why   would   one wish to fix it if it isn’t broken?  Sometimes, this attitude makes perfect sense [and need not always indicate weakness, laziness, or stupidity on the part of the person who holds it.  Sometimes things are really good, just as they are, and do not need improvement].

The same is true of the less tangible aspects of humanity.  For example, many traditions, like the WWV system, function very well also.  That’s probably why most customs in fact, become traditions; because over time, they’ve proven to be the over all best way to fill specific societal needs.  The time-tested technique of hand washing prior to surgery has been practiced for centuries by doctors without much alteration, except for perhaps the soaps and towels used.  It still accomplishes very well what we expect of it – drastically reduces infection rates among patients.  So, again, why would we want to change it?

It’s simply not enough for urging that something be replaced, just because it’s old, a point illustrated by the episode “Relics” from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  You’ll remember this one, where Scotty helped the Enterprise crew free their ship from the Dyson Sphere.  LaForge said to Scotty, something like, “Just because something’s old doesn’t mean that you throw it away.”  He was referring to Scotty himself, who had begun feeling useless, being from a time eighty years earlier.

Yes, again, the view may be decreasing in strength.  Certainly there are invalid reasons for invoking it, particularly to justify sloth.  And as people discover more opportunities, the prevalence of this view, at least insofar as that part of it which is motivated by these excuses, will continue declining.

However, I don’t think we’ll ever totally eliminate the valid reasons for refraining from progress.   Very often, sticking with tradition is the better way to go.  Another case in point:  Consider that sometimes, the progress-hungry push for advancement just because the advanced idea is new, and not because it will create a marked improvement in operations.  This used to happen at work a lot.  These young, hot-shot software engineers thought they knew more than us older folk, who’d been working there for decades.  So they’d arrogantly proposed the gutting of perfectly functional systems (say, those written in C++ or Pascal) just so that they’d get to rewrite them in Java, and acquire the role of expert in the system, in effect steeling that role from the older engineers.  At [work], many such efforts were mounted, motivated by these sorts of cut-throat maneuvers, though the actual functional improvements of the systems that resulted were often marginal at best, and sometimes measurably worse.

This jumping on the “It’s New New New” train generates much more contention than necessary in software development groups, and often the seasoned people who know better are forced to just keep quiet because management is typically seduced by the whole new-is-betteridea.  It’d be interesting to do a study about all the efforts that failed at [work] because the new-hungry didn’t stop to consider the broader canvas.

When I started working there in 1988, the search and retrieval infrastructure was based on IBM mainframe processors and disk drives running the MVS operating system.  There were at least three attempts during my career there to replace these systems with various versions of Sun processors and the UNIX operating system.  Well, none of them succeeded, costing the company millions to fund projects that eventually got scrapped.  When I left in 2003, the search and retrieval functions were still being executed in mainframe environments although there had been some successful migration of the user interface parts of the original systems to UNIX and Windows NT systems.  The point is that being too eager to push for change can end up costing much more than the proposed change saves, and in fact, it very often does.  Change does not always produce the best outcomes therefore, particularly when holding with tradition offers productive solutions.

At [work], there were basically two camps of software developers:  Those that worked in the real time system (RTS), and those that programmed the newer UNIX and Windows based technologies.  The RTS was the mainframe-based functionality, and The UNIX and Windows people used to poke fun at the RTS folks, calling them the keepers of dinosaurs, old timers, and such.  But interestingly, the vast majority of the company’s revenue in the 1990s came from programs running on those older RTS systems.  In fact, people used to say that RGS stood for _Revenue Generating System_ and not real time system; their way of joking back at the UNIX people.  The problem therefore with always concluding that newer is better is that very often, as proven by experience in this environment, it is not.  New is _not_ always better.  [...]

Tom Hesley

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