Had a bit of an epiphany

Though it was really more of a "hang on, I knew that" moment.

I was watching a snippet of a tutorial video on doing something musical on the computer, and the guy was listing the absolute minimum system you needed for doing this thing, and it was pretty much just a bit whizzier than the system I've got. And I thought "funny...", because back when I started doing music on computers the absolute minimum system was just a bit whizzier than the one I had, and it always has been. I thought it was just my bad luck, or that I tended to jump too soon rather than waiting for something better to come along.

But no. That's how it's meant to be.

It's a well-known and popular factoid that what they call Big Pharma has absolutely no incentive to invest in curing diseases. Every disease they cure is a source of profit gone, every patient made well a patient who won't be coming back for more. And as my business-minded friends will enthusiastically tell me, a company that knowingly deprives itself of profit or reduces its customer base is...well, it just doesn't happen. It's completely counter-productive. So they palliate our symptoms, and they prevent death where possible (because dead people also tend to stop being customers) and they leave it at that. Doesn't matter how many cures for diabetes or whatever the scientists discover or the tabloids trumpet, you won't be seeing them while there's still a market for insulin. Not ever.

And (this is the epiphany part) it must, by the same remorseless economic logic, be the same with everything.

No computer shop wants to sell you "the last computer you'll ever need" because then you won't be coming in for another. And that is why the linked development of computer hardware and software has always been, to my dull-witted bemusement, like one company making ever bigger storage boxes, and another company making ever bulkier padding so that the actual capacity of the box remains the same, just not quite big enough for all your stuff. You could do without the padding, and then your stuff would rattle around and get damaged, or you could put up with the smaller box for the rest of your life...or you can buy into the game and get another new computer that won't quite do everything you want it to, and hope that when you can afford the next one it'll be whizzy enough to last your time.

Of course I'm oversimplifying. What I can do with the system I've got is streets ahead of what I could do back when I started doing music on computers. Raised expectations also play a part--you hear a fabulous new VST on a video demo and you save up for it, and by the time you can afford it (and your computer can almost handle it) mark 2 is already on the shelves and mark 1 sounds decidedly drab next to it. That's the part you can choose not to be seduced by. But the game remains the same, and the new sounds haunt your dreams, and there's always that lying hope that one day you'll find it, the last computer you'll ever need, the cure for your disease.

All this is a tangent to some thoughts about progress I've been having, some rehashed and some new. They may emerge in another post.

The Fifth Wall is still percolating, but it will happen. Honest.

Briefly, because it's bedtime

This: Progress, as we generally understand it, is an illusion. Or, perhaps, a lie.

I've said before that in my view progress means "moving forward," that moving forward involves knowing which way "forward" is, and defining a direction as "forward" involves having a goal closer to which moving "forward" will take us. One can decide to put a person on the moon, and everything one does that works toward that goal is furthering progress toward that goal. That is real progress. One cannot have progress without a goal.

But sometimes things happen by accident. Or sometimes a goal we have attained brings unexpected fringe benefits with it. What we do then is this. We retroactively define everything that led up to the accident or the fringe benefit as "progress," much as people used to define the evolutionary process as the ordered, willed march up through the stages of development toward the triumphant culmination of god's divine plan in the form of, er, me. You can see the flaw in the logic right there.

And this leads to the really big mistake of assuming that we can have progress without a goal. As long as we are constantly learning to make things bigger, or smaller, or faster, or cheaper, or more expensive, we can call that progress. Never mind that the things are so big, or small, or expensive or whatever that they're no actual use to anybody. We'll just market them aggressively and people will buy them anyway. Because you can't stop progress, and anyone who wants to is, well, they're just a bunch of poopy-heads, so ner.

Another reason why once the hardware guys have come up with a faster chip the software guys have to come up with an OS which will slow it down again. A computer that works so fast it's impossible for a human to interact meaningfully with it is no use to anyone. But you have to keep making faster and faster chips, because that's progress. And if, purely by accident, something you make actually does somebody some good, that just proves that it is real progress.

Except it isn't. It's an illusion. It's a lie. And it's a distraction.

Real progress has goals. More. Real progress has goals which redound to the lasting good of people in the mass. Real progress is about saving the biosphere. Real progress is about devising a political system which works to everyone's benefit. Real progress is about abolishing the game we have made of life, the game that has winners and losers, and creating a new game in which everybody wins. Real progress is not about discovering accidentally that something you made to make a profit can be used to make somebody's life better. Real progress is about setting out to make that person's life better and doing it.

Most of what we call progress in our time is meaningless flailing and floundering. We have undoubtedly done some amazing things that way. How many more amazing things might we have done if we had actually meant to.

And on that note, goodnight.