Think Critical

Over on my publishing site, BarhamInk.com, I’ve just posted the release date and gorgeous cover art for the next book in my fanstasy series Alora’s Tear. It’s called The Voice like Water and will be available on August 9th, 2016.

Head over and check out the new cover!

As always, thanks for helping to support my writing.

It’s 1997 and I’ve just researched and configured the best PC I can imagine for what was then a reasonable price. The beast, an ominous black tower in a world of boring beige, has a CPU ten times faster than the Packard Bell it’s replacing. It runs a new technology called AGP, which the sales person assures me is not only as good as the popular PCI solution but better.

Long story short, that guy was either a liar or an idiot. The lie plagued my perception of that PC from the very start and fueled an imbalance that may only now be coming to rest.

You see, from that point forward there was always something incredible right around the corner. At first, it was a new PC that would be powerful enough to run the games I wanted to play at the time (AGP wasn’t upgradable, and the built-in card was starved for video memory, a critically important spec back then).

Then it was a laptop that felt like a real computer and not a hamstrung hack attempting the future before its time. I used some laptops (IBM, Compaq, HP) but didn’t pursue buying. I found that dream laptop (excuse me, notebook) in a Titanium PowerBook G4, ever after referred to affectionately as the TiBook. It had a trackpad that worked as advertised, a widescreen display, an operating system that looked modern, even futuristic without looking like a neon sign in Vegas, and that beautifully designed case.

Battery life was good for the time, but not great in practical use. It was powerful, but buying or building a desktop with visibly more power was still easy and relatively cheap. And so the balance favored the future again, and I waited.

The answer to my notebook-that-feels-like-a-desktop came with a Penryn Macbook Pro. It even played PC games of the time at respectable frame rates using Boot Camp. That machine, to this day is probably my favorite computer. I wrote my first novel on it, played countless hours of World of Warcraft, edited the first videos of my daughter.

But the imbalance came again. Despite its power, mobility grew more important. Lighter, thinner, better battery life, the list that lay just around the corner. A Macbook Air came next, and now a Macbook, tiny and light, powerful enough to do all that I want these days on my work computer, and the most beautifully designed notebook I’ve ever seen (good luck topping this one, Jonny).

But I’d traded performance for portability, so I built a gaming PC between the time of the stalwart Macbook Pro and the Macbook Air: my for-fun computer. It is fast and powerful, even today, and with a reasonable upgrade to the GPU, runs current games at another of those ever-retreating corners I’ve been waiting so long to turn, 1080p 60fps. Consoles haven’t truly done it yet, and look to be making the jump to 4k before they get the chance. As for me, I look at the 4k televisions in stores and see very little real world difference between them and my 1080p plasma, unlike with Retina where the difference achieved another past-fantasy tech milestone.

And that gets us to my point. I’ve reached a point of equilibrium in tech. Light, powerful, beautiful notebook, check (then do the same for TV display, set-top box, sound system, gaming PC, tablet, phone, even a smartwatch). With all of this amazing hardware, and the always evolving (usually improving) software, there are so few real world corners left to turn.

There’s always a new iPhone on the horizon, of course, a new everything. For the first time, however, none of it feels particularly pressing. Nothing feels like “Oh, if I only had a machine that would…” at this point. The last two items on my list were 1080p 60fps and an instantly responding Apple Watch (which, though I don’t have it yet, seems to be the real deal with WatchOS 3). It’s a somewhat peaceful and somewhat empty feeling, as if a part of me dissolved without my permission.

Out there, some will shout “VR!” and “Self-driving cars!” and whatever else. I’ve tried VR, and it’s an interesting curiosity. I’m intrigued by a self-driving car, but the corner to turn for that one seems years away, maybe a decade, and that’s not considering the fact that a teacher’s salary is extremely unlikely to pay for one in the first—or second—phase (even the 30k Tesla Model 3 is priced beyond that, and that’s with virtually no autonomous features, or at least not the impressive, world changing ones).

So for now, and possibly the first time since I was 13 or 14, the world of technology seems good enough. Can it get better? Always, and I fully expect it to. Will I want some new shiny thing come September, probably, but if Apple released nothing, just went totally dark, I’d be fine, and not in the sense that I’d survive, but in the sense that I wouldn’t feel compelled to ask for anything more. This 6S performs brilliantly in every measure I can think of. Ditto for all my other current devices.

I suppose the most difficult part of balance is maintaining it. Perhaps that’s the new question. Is that next reveal enough to tip the scales? Is there something out there that’s coming up next that completes an imagined technological picture you have for yourself?

For me, for now—for once—the answer is “No.”

Before I begin: If you support Bernie by harassing women or other public figures, attacking Hillary Clinton with sexist language and the tactics of the vile Gamergate or other foul misogynist hate groups, I am not your friend. I am not your ally, nor are you mine. You are a scourge that needs silencing and a pestilence in need of a cure. Stop this nonsense immediately and stand with the rest of us—for something—not against something in a thinly veiled attempt to justify your hate.

The following thoughts arose from a number of conservative family members asking why I support Bernie Sanders. For some time I’ve wanted to write a post encapsulating my decision and continued position. This is my response 

As a clear-thinking, educated person, I understand where the money for a progressive agenda would have to come from. I understand that I would pay more to the system in hopes of saving money elsewhere and to help those who need it most. These values are not foolish, ill conceived, or even unrealistic. I am not some hoodwinked, moony-eyed youth, dazzled by the allure of free.

I do not make these decisions lightly but with the most concerted of efforts to fully understand my own position foremost, and those of others so as to not be blind to the faults of my own choice (and there are several) or the virtues of others’.

And so, a few principles.

Our government should help those who need help, and all people should have a truly equal chance. The US healthcare system is a blight that needs to be eradicated, replaced with an alternative reflecting the modern world and not a profit machine fueled by illness and misfortune. I respect those who fight for a noble cause, even when it is not popular. Only the people should be able to affect elections, not large corporate donations and backdoor deals. Our voting system—the key component to the greatness of our country—is broken, designed to punish the powerless and reward the powerful when it should simply count each person and their singular vote.

I do not support dividing everyone’s income to the point at which we are all paid the same. That scenario would be communist. Some have earned an easier life by sacrifice, and some have earned a harder one. If socialism means balancing the scales so that the American dream—that pursuit of a better life through hard work can result in success for any person willing to do said work—can be real again, then I am indeed for socialism. But I have always (even when I voted for Bush in 2000) insisted that our government exists to work for us, and that we pay into it for the services it can provide, be it roads and bridges, education, a military to protect us (though only as a last resort), or with clean, efficient energy, and a healthcare system that helps everyone.

I watched as a corrupt insurance industry and profit-driven medical industry depleted my Grandparents’ savings while my Grandfather struggled with the horror of dementia and my Grandmother struggled as her partner of five decades fought against that horror. And it only got worse as his condition got worse. It turns my stomach to think of it.

When I look into my son’s bleeding face (he fell and bumped his chin on the bed) I am ashamed that even one of my first thoughts is given to the bill and not to his pain or fear. Every thought should go to him. This too turns my stomach.

Why do we generate all of this prosperity if we must live in fear that it will be swept away by random chance?

Some events are unavoidable. But if our government is going to pay for something with the taxes they extract from us, let it be this. And the most embarrassing part for our nation is that other countries have already solved this problem. The systems vary, and none are perfect, but they are all more effective and far less expensive than ours. This is the issue for which I feel the most passionate, partial measures will not do.

In high school I read Wayne Gretzky’s biography, and one quote stood out (a quote I also appreciated much later when Steve Jobs reiterated it). He said, “I skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been.” I began then to apply this philosophy to my political views.

In a hundred years, a thousand, will the greatest country on Earth help its people when they are sick, or will it watch them suffer as their life savings is instantly consumed and they worry about money when they should be focusing on those for whom they care most? After examining all of my politics under this lens, I saw what I would someday want in a politician.

Then, about a years ago, I read about Bernie Sanders. Nearly all of his policies pass my self-imposed test. In a hundred, a thousand years will we: restrict people based on their gender, race, or sexual orientation? Listen to them instead of saying that the problem is already solved? Power our industry and personal lives cleanly and efficiently or in whatever way is most profitable?

Will we be at war with a world full of enemies, or will we have found solutions to render those enemies ineffectual and irrelevant—or even have managed to make them into allies? Will we pride ourselves in the education of our people—so much so that we would pay to make certain that they are all educated? Will we, the people, decide what steps our government takes, making sure that it acts in our interests and not in the interests of others?

Or, will we still remain at the whims of capitalist industry, which though it has served us well, has clear flaws that concentrate wealth and power at the top, while continuously forcing those at the bottom further and further down? Will we shout insults, build walls, and shoot first, asking questions later like fearful cavemen (or women) cowering in the dark, paranoid of everyone and everything that is not like us?

Or, will we apathetically accept that the world cannot be changed, that our lives, and the lives of those whose are the hardest, cannot be improved? Will we reach for half-loves and smile when given our quarter portion? Will we deal and barter with swindlers who already have more than they and a dozen generations of their descendants could ever use?

So many of our major victories as a people came from skating to where the puck was going, to where the world was going. The pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic did. The revolutionaries did. Lincoln did with the emancipation. When we awoke to Hitler and the Japanese, when women won the right to vote, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, we skated to where the world was going.

But we know this only in hindsight. Now, today, we must choose to the best of our abilities where we think the puck will go. Bernie Sanders aims for where I think the puck will be. I support him because I want all of us to be there, too.

Do you like Apple’s Retina MacBook? Do you still enjoy wearing an Apple Watch every day? Maybe you like the look of Tesla’s upcoming Model 3 or use your iPad Pro as a full-fledged computer.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but you’re wrong. Wrong for liking things that others don’t, wrong for attempting to understand where these designs and products are coming from rather than critiquing the obvious compromises they’ve made or the places where they’ve actually chosen to diverge from the herd, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Well, maybe wrong, as long as the future plays out a certain way and those spouting constant criticism turn out to be right (even a broken clock…). And what is right? Is it vindication in finding a MacBook five years from now that’s much faster and has much better battery life? If so, the great online advisors can claim the win.

“See, we told you v1 was underpowered and had terrible battery.”

Or, “See, we told you that Tesla would have to change that no-grille design if they wanted to sell more cars.”

Problem is, they have merely predicted the inevitable. Computers will get faster, cars will have different visual touches, tablet operating systems will become more capable. Meanwhile, many must sit back and watch as the collective club nods sagely at each other for fear of ending up being the one who was wrong.

For being the one who liked Apple Watch 1.0, they will suffer the future torment of “I told you so.” And then won’t they feel dumb? After all, isn’t the most important thing to appear smart? Turns out ™, you can be smart and disagree with the crowd. You can be insightful, and not correctly predict the future. And more essentially, simply by offering a different viewpoint, you can create a much more interesting discussion.

Am I encouraging vehement Mac vs. PC era arguments? No. Am I saying that the conventional wisdom of a few high profile voices is always wrong? No. But the discourse suffers from the fear of being in the out group, the fear of having a dissenting opinion. If we were all wrong a little more often, we’d have a much more varied conversation and foster inclusivity at a basic level.

So, I’ll say it. I think all of these products are great, intriguing, and worthy of discussion from many viewpoints, not just criticisms of their most obvious compromises. And none of them are perfect. None are above criticism, but they are above only criticism.

If you think the same, you should not be afraid to say so, because understanding why something is the way it is informs us of the reality in which we live and not a fantasy where we get to design a world we would prefer. After all, we don’t study the horse only to say that it is not a unicorn, and that if evolution (or deity) had only included a three-foot horn on the horse’s forehead, it would have been an acceptable creature. Instead we understand the beauty of the thing as it is, what evolutionary steps may have led to its current form, and maybe every so often wonder if the unicorn is out there somewhere.

The unicorn becomes part of the larger understanding, just as our wished-for versions of iOS or a Mac Pro with gaming GPUs should be a part. Speculate, certainly. Criticize, of course. But don’t forget that the larger part of the fun is to analyze and thus further understand the things we are interested in. Stop caving to the social pressure of being right. Be reasonable, be considerate, but worry more about appreciating the thing before leveling the same criticism that a half-dozen full-time pundits have already articulated.

It’s ok. Appreciation is not equivalent to inferior intellect.