Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance applied to technology - Part I


I read Pirsig's book almost 10 years ago, but it made a huge impact on how I think about technology.

Frustration

I remember at a point in the book, the author describes the frustration of individuals that purchased expensive BMW bikes only to have them break down.  He then shows how the meditation he does with maintaining his own older bike leads to him having a understanding of how the bike operates and therefore reduces frustration.  Individuals become angry when they pay for value and then feel powerless to fix the problems when they occur.  Then they take it in to a shop where they are even more frustrated by additional costs to fix problems they don't understand.

The parallel to expensive computers is easy to make.  I've encountered so many furious owners of computers that just paid 2k for machines they now can't "log in" to or have problems with "the machine dragging".  It is an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness, and a sense of entitlement that this should work because I gave money in exchange for great value.  The frustration is then extended to IT similar to a mechanic fixing a car.  The owner may believe that (IT) is taking advantage of their lack of knowledge, and they can't shake the feeling that if everything worked how it was supposed to, they wouldn't IT departments to clean up the mess.

Pirsig talks in length about how through "meditation" and understanding of the way the system (motorcycle) works he achieves a happiness that extends beyond even the ability to produce (in this case ride the motorcycle).

In this IT world of high expectations, rapid deployment, agile development I feel we are dangerously forgetting this lesson of a root cause of frustration.  With rapid change, how can we manage our own understanding of all that is new and how it fits in our current machine, if we haven't even mastered the base understanding of what we operate.

In truth it is daunting to look to try to understand the myriad of technology pieces that exist, and the fear of course is that it will take up our most valuable resource in life.. time.  Time that could be spent with families, hobbies or sleeping.

So where do I begin?

As I type this, I realize I have no idea how this post will get to the internet, how anyone follows it, what the functions of the Blogger application are that I'm using and how the entire ecosystem of the internet and the MacBook Pro actually work.  If the publish button doesn't work as I expect, I'll meet the frustration of this lack of knowledge head on!

So again where to begin?