November nineteenth
Some time ago, I watched a technology connections video that was a bit of a rant that I mostly agree with, if not the in the same doom-and-gloom way it was presented.
(Watch it if you want, but it doesn’t matter if you haven’t, we're just talking about a quote from it here.)
He says something at the end of the video that was phrased in a way my brain had not formed before this — “Computing is a solved problem.”
Computing is a solved problem. Damn. That hit. He gave the example of an older computer still being able to edit videos. I’ll give the example of spreadsheets and a notes app. There are plenty of amazing apps for every purpose imaginable out there, but just about everything you could want to do to organize your own life, you can do with a spreadsheet and a good notes app / lite word processor.
Fewer apps is better apps, if you ask me.
When I started the previous Angus+ site, I was looking for an interesting tech problem to solve and business to start. But most of the areas I was looking in are pretty much basic computing. I made a notes app and a TV tracker that’s easily replicated with, you guessed it, a spreadsheet.
Computing is a solved problem.
That's not to say there aren’t plenty of ways to improve the way we use computers, or optimize them, or adapt them to new types of users and workers and industries. Making workers more productive is a bottomless well. But it’s a solved problem in the way personal banking was a solved problem some number of centuries ago. Big brick building you stash your money in. Handy! Everything since that has been the bank trying to take more of your money for letting you keep it there. Some of those extra services are useful, but the fundamental problem was solved centuries ago.
And yes there are plenty of tech problems to solve and industries that can benefit. But when I started doing coding stuff in the late 90s, programming was far from easy. There was a lot to build. It was exciting. The internet was vacant land. It still had the potential to become anything and go in 100 different directions. It was full of artistic and curious settlers. Now it’s full of … money. Today’s problems aren’t yesterday’s problems and today's problems aren't the ones that make a lot of us early settler types go “oooooh!”
So. Where’s a settler to go? Where’s the next open land? It’s not crypto (gross), it’s not AI (a tool, also gross), it’s not [whatever new coding language is trendy when you read this].
Maybe it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, the wild west of a new industry. Maybe I got incredibly lucky to be shown computers just as all the internet land became available.
And so I'm opening this site, and my mind, up to new areas of interest. You never know what will catch you, and for me an idea won't hook me until I start poking at it.
A doctor said something interesting to me recently. She said that medical tech has advanced so much in the last decade, for example, that staying healthy just to push back the year you need any given medical treatment is a worthy goal in and of itself. Eat well and exercise, not just to live longer, but to make your death more comfortable and treatment of whatever does kill you better. (My interpretation, not her exact words.)
And thinking about it, I don't find computing any more efficient, comfortable or fun than I did in 2016. A solved problem.