{"id":801,"date":"2015-07-09T14:59:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T12:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=801"},"modified":"2015-07-09T14:59:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T12:59:15","slug":"multipliers-dont-create","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/2015\/07\/09\/multipliers-dont-create\/","title":{"rendered":"Multipliers Don\u2019t Create"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, that\u2019s a rather general topic, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Okay, let\u2019s get specific:\u00a0 in the last twenty years, computers and software, roughly labeled \u201ctechnology,\u201d have become absolutely ubiquitous and necessary in first-world business.\u00a0 And yet, human expectations of them have been rather wildly unrealistic<\/span>, generally being let down in spite of the successes they bring.<\/p>\n

These themes have played themselves out in the startup community for two straight decades now, and I\u2019ve been neck-deep in it the entire time. \u00a0Companies fail time and time again when it seems like a no-brainer for success. \u00a0I\u2019m always a little surprised that people still seem to miss out on what really is going on there.\u00a0 In the context of this article, let\u2019s pretend it\u2019s a Tom Clancy novel and the tech always works as intended, no failures, okay?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s first answer the implied question:\u00a0 Why is Tech so commonplace now?<\/p>\n

Obviously the first answer from many people in the working-day world is \u201cI can\u2019t do my job without the computer.\u201d \u00a0But why is that?\u00a0 Outside of the people whose jobs are<\/em> the computer (IT staff, etc.), most people have jobs that either used to be done, or could have been done, in the \u201creal world\u201d with paper and pen, filing, mechanicals, etc.<\/p>\n

So what happened here?<\/p>\n

The competitive landscape changed<\/em>.\u00a0 Tech as a tool is a Force Multiplier<\/em>.\u00a0 That\u2019s a military term that generally refers to any mechanism, terrain, or other condition that can make a fighting unit more effective.\u00a0 Park a squad of infantry in the middle of an open field and call it a \u201cforce value\u201d of 1.\u00a0 Put them in a light forest and you might have a value now of 2 or 3.\u00a0 Put them in a reinforced bunker with fixed guns and you can really amplify their ability.<\/p>\n

Tech in business works as a force multiplier for most jobs it applies to.\u00a0 The accountant who used to have to slave away at the books with a pencil and a calculator (an early force multiplier, pun intended) now has a PC running Excel (I was tempted to say Lotus there, giving away my Internet age), which can do much of the job far, far faster and enabling that person to do multiple times the amount of work in the same time.\u00a0 It multiplied that person\u2019s ability to work<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The digital photographer can now snap thousands of shots and find the keepers much <\/em>faster.\u00a0 Tech has made film photography largely obsolete.<\/p>\n

The astronomer can now sift through enormous mounds of data in a week that in the past would have taken decades to work through.<\/p>\n

The marketing and sales execs of companies can determine worthy paths of action based on decision support systems built over the last couple of decades which produce accurate and timely information much faster and more accurately than human calculations and instinct could.<\/p>\n

The end result, and the short answer to the question is:\u00a0 businesses that don\u2019t use Tech as a force multiplier are subject to a hefty disadvantage in the marketplace.\u00a0 In a capitalist society, where money wins over all, such a disadvantage either amounts to corporate suicide or is suffered as a result of some benefit provided that disallows the use of the multiplier (think: handcrafted woodworks sold in a niche market \u2013 obviously can\u2019t use a computer-driven lathe to do the job).<\/p>\n

So\u2026tying back to the original theme – how does this relate to human expectations?<\/p>\n

Humans, as a rule, don\u2019t \u201cget\u201d computers.\u00a0 People don\u2019t understand them, they just understand how to use them.\u00a0 A very low percentage of the population really understand how to convince a computer to do something (and even fewer among them understand what they need<\/em> to convince the computer to do).<\/p>\n

When computing arrived on the scene, it was first a precious commodity.\u00a0 The investment in computing was serious business, and only the richest could afford it \u2013 which is slightly ironic, given its nature in reducing human costs.<\/p>\n

In short order, however, computing and the spread of computing devices put computing into commodity status, even children had them – and computing\u00a0made certain things possible that simply were not possible before<\/em>, generating the illusion that Tech was a creative force unto itself.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n