It isn't exactly a habit

that this column is again a bit late. School startup for the new semester still has its hiccups it seems, and numerous other time robbers constantly conspire to make each day's list of TODOs longer than the day before.

One of the worst time wasters are telephone and/or online help desks. As he writes this, he is waiting for someone to answer his call to new telephone provider Telus. There's already some history there, as the first technician who visited to install the supposedly wicked-fast fibre begged off as too inexperienced to handle the complex setup in the Spy's house. No appointment was officially booked for a next visit so the Spy was just heading out the following Saturday to a grandson's soccer game when the replacement tech showed up. Yes, he did the job, said it was routine, but...didn't mention the phone service would go down for five days to effect the transfer from Shaw/Rogers.

And, now that has been resolved, it would be nice to set up voice mail with the new outfit. However, following the online instructions does not work, as every attempt to dial the requisite number results in a failed call. The online help isn't, and as for the seemingly mythical telephone service desk, after half an hour listening to non-soothing music, no human voice has yet to be manifest. Mind you, it was an equally fraught adventure trying to contact Shaw/Rogers about sending their equipment back. When finally received from an apparently real chat person, those instructions flatly contradicted the ones posted on their web site.The latter said one must obtain a FedEx code, the chat agent said Canada Post and sent a first magic code to obtain the second magic code/shipping label from a post office.

However,

Canada's postal workers have been on strike the last few weeks, and only might staff some offices going forward with a now rotating job action replacing the blanket walkout. See, they want not only a significant raise in pay, but demand the PO retain all current delivery jobs and rural post offices indefinitely, despite that the Postal Service is losing money by the cruise ship load, and every labour disruption means more companies look elsewhere for package delivery, thus deepening the deficit. If it were a private corporation rather than crown-owned, it would be long since bankrupt. Thus when the inevitable restructurings do arrive, far more jobs will vanish than if the union had not struck and permanently scared off even more customers. One is reminded of the days when railroads transitioned from coal fired steam engines to diesel electric units. The firemen could not be laid off or reassigned to other work, so they continued to ride the cab, complete with sleeping bag and pillow--the origin of the term "featherbedding" to describe a many times since repeated practice in similar situations.

One of the questions for students the Spy has in his text on issues in technology adoption asks them to say what the longer term effect of the Internet will have on the hobby of stamp collecting. Since the first class that answered that back in 1987, almost everyone with very few exceptions has declaimed upon the benefits of online data bases to catalog and value one's collection--and this is apparently now also the AI answer to the question (one can always tell when it's writing mindless majoritarian but fact free answers for students who don't want to expand their own minds). Invariably when he returns the assignment he mildly enquires "When was the last time you wrote a letter, put it in an envelope, fixed a stamp on it, and mailed it?" After no one raises a hand, a blinking realization sets in--first class mail is long since bsolete.

Gone are the days when the Spy's mother rebelled at the change from one cent to two cents to send a Christmas card, and responded by ruthlessly cutting her list of recipients in half--all the way down to the three hundred of her most intimate circle of correspondents. For the most part, postal services sell souvenir stamps to collectors, and companies that sent bulk mail machine stamp it or pay a flat fee for delivery. Apparently the average household receives one or two pieces of first class mail a week. Everything else is bulk advertising. The Spy thinks that number may be inflated. His mailbox gets maybe four to six such a month. On the other hand, business tends to send a substantial amount of mail, though far less than it once did. Bills, receipts, cheques still do traverse the mailways to an extent, but mostly business to business. However, many retailers rely on the post office only to advertise goods and services, for the alternative carriers are generally set up exclusively for package delivery (a service from which Uber and its imitators now derive more revenue than from delivering people).

The whole post office fiasco is another example of

failing to think through (or even think about) the consequences of decisions, especially those around systems, whether of individuals, or, more consequently, institutions. Indeed, the more complex and longest-standing institutionalized systems must change the most or die out with the advent of new technologies, sometimes even if the intended outcome was just a wee efficiency tweak or more speed. In particular, computerizing existing systems invariably changes both them and the people using them, usually profoundly. The consequence: things now happen with little or no friction. Moreover, there is often little or no appetite or opportunity for reflection, evaluation, and cautionary or corrective human input along the way. Hidden issues in the traditional, well worn, but somewhat flawed setup now cause errors to be thrown faster and to greater effect than any human can routinely apply bandages and stave off impending catastrophe. Errors that once took a week to manifest, affected only a few people before an alert was thrown, and took minutes to remedy now happen in nanoseconds, affect multitudes immediately, and may take months to clean up a gigantic mess.

"But we only made one little change!" is the planners' inevitable chorus. Whoopsie on not consulting anyone using the system about the consequences to their corner of the enterprise that had been working more or less ticket-y-boo for decades. The Spy's mental picture whenever that happens (often, even if computers are not involved) is that of a table with a couple of hundred dominos standing upright in a spiral pattern. Someone plinks one, it falls agains the next, and in seconds the whole lot are prone on the table. Sic transit. [insert comment here: The hold for tech support has now lasted over an hour at this point...but wait, just after writing those words a rep came on the line, but didn't know what to do without calling a supervisor, so the wait resumes.] [added later: The problem: no one told the Spy that his new service was one feature only, call display and no voice mail by default. The solution: revise the contract, pay a little more for two features, and wait ten hours for the change to take effect. By the end of the day, all was working. Humph.]

Speaking of dominos,

the monkey wrenches thrown into the world economy by the dUS president who apparently doesn't understand how tariffs work (they are past proven to be crippling taxes that wreck multiple economies, threaten workers' jobs, and inflate the poorest people's costs) are starting to overcome the economic friction supplied by product inventories and manifest the fiscal and trade train wreck they always are. Job losses are multiplying, farms, stores, and restaurants cannot or will not hire workers, many have already become insolvent, with several restaurants chains already out of business, inflation is showing signs of inflating, and no, lower interest rates cannot solve such made-in-government problems.

Now, turning to tech decisions,

it would appear that hard-nosed Microsoft has officially R.I.P.ed Windows 10. Owners of non-upgradable machines have a choice of running a system that will no longer see security updates (risky) or buying a new machine that can fully run version 11. The latter choice could be a painful buy for many people in current economic conditions, especially as the price-elevating blight of tariff taxes begins to eat their wallets. The Spy expects hacks will soon appear that allow eleven to be installed anyway despite MS [while preparing to proofread, he spotted an ad for one]. After all, the Spy did that sort of thing with old Macs. Eventually the the oldie but still goodies get too slow by comparison with the nimble new and in this instance the day when Apple cuts them all off by discontinuing support in the OS for Intel chips cannot be very far off. C'est le mort.

And, speaking of things Apple,

the Spy wonders whether the small computer market, theirs in particular, has become mature enough that the wild west days of rapid innovation, risky introductions, and the churn of companies that enter the marketplace with a sudden flash-bang or vanish it similarly (sometimes both in short order) has passed, with the boom-and-bust circus act now switching from computer and peripheral hardware maker-marketers to the newest (not conceptually new to the old guard) wunderkid-on-the-block (drum roll as the ringmaster signals the clowns) AI, which surely lives up to the first half of its name, though the second half is the thing it most certainly is not, and those who over-rely on it to do their thinking for them are thereby rendering impotent their own.

Wait, after that run-on ramble, why does he so wonder (something an AI cannot do, BTW)? Because both Apple, and most others extent in the industry have retreated into taking baby steps--boringly incremental changes (not always improvements) that are significant only for their predictability, non-game changingness, and market preservationness. (See. Unlike the established computing industry where change has gone glacial, though change in the latter sector is accelerating, even the English language can add new words all the time right before your very eyes.

And for the wrap of the month

the Spy musk also wonder whether recent multiple failures among the Starlink swarm are harbingers of something more ominous. True, the many thousands of such low-Earth orbit satellites are only supposed to last about five years before failing and having a falling-out-cum-burnout event as they catastrophically leave their office space behind and then get atmospherically fired. (A little riskier than dUS government work.) Apparently debris from premature such (quite literal) downsizing has been reaching Earth. Hmmm. Why the durability failures combined with clean failure failures? Collisions to start with? If so, what if low orbit became a junkyard of satellite debris. It wouldn't take many high speed collisions for the scrap pieces to start a chain reaction of many more and the resulting low-orbit junk shrapnel render the space unusable and impassible going forward. On the job creation side, perhaps professions of orbital salvager and junkyard proprietor would emerge. Seen a few SF stories around the idea lately, so this isn't a novel thought, though perhaps the Spy could indeed use it in his next novel.

TTFN

with that pleasant thought, for the Spy does not want to use the whole of Thanksgiving Day working. Yes, yes, we Canadians eschew celebrating the fest in the middle of winter when our dUS counterparts have their own.

--The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author's own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is Professor of Computing Science and Mathematics and Assistant Dean of Science at Canada's Trinity Western University. He completed his fifty-fifth year as a high school and university teacher in 2025. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several commercial, nonprofit, and/or educational organizations and participated in developing industry computing and educational standards both nationally and internationally. He is a long-time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named the best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His various columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (both dead tree and online formats) since the early 1980s, and he's been a regular participant and speaker at churches, schools, and academic meetings and conferences. He is a half century-long member of the IEEE, ACM, and MAA. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Langley/Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1969 to 2021 when cancer happened and she left for heaven, so he latterly continues alone, depending heavily on family and friends to manage.

URL s for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: https://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : https://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : https://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : https://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : https://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : https://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: https://www.arjay.ca

TechEthics Site (Fourth edition of text; the fifth has been released; site redesigned.) : https://www.arjaybooks.com/EthTech/index.htm

Publisher's Site: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html

URLs for the newest edition of Issues Text:

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume One: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385226818/the-fourth-civilization-volume-one/

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume Two: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385232932/the-fourth-civilization-volume-two/