I complain about technology all the time. I hate how involved I have to be in it to enjoy it. Software patches, Blue Screens of Death, different file formats, lack of universal connectivity — these are all the symptoms of technology that is not the technology of the future. If you have the pleasure of dealing with technology in an enterprise, the situation there looks even more dismal: layers and layers of abstraction akwardly strung together, preventing us from ever forgetting about the bottommost layer. (Technology consumers–especially (at least before Apple started hurrying and cutting corners everywhere) Mac users, you have no idea how lucky you are!)

Why do I have to quit iTunes before proceeding with an update or restart my computer afterwards? Why can’t my application know it’s broken, automatically fix itself and update itself?

But then I add some perspective to this problem — we cringe in fear when we hear about hand-punched cards that ended in machine code the instructions needed to multiply two numbers. I am not that old, but when I tell my friends about loading programs from cassette tapes and having to number each line of my program, they give me a pitying look. Technology is getting better, and its only sin is giving us the glimpse of its potential.

The future is very exciting indeed.