Kluge

is an excellent book by Gary Marcus (isbn 978-0-571-23652-7). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

The best science, like the best engineering, often comes from understanding not just how things are, but how else they could have been.

One molecule of DNA polymerase does its job in a perfectly straight-forward fashion, but the other does so in a back-and-forth, herky-jerky way that would drive any rational engineer insane. Nature is prone to making kluges because it doesn't "care" whether its products are perfect or elegant. If something works, it spreads. If it doesn't, it dies out.

What can evolve at any given point in time is heavily constrained by what has evolved before.

The vast majority of our genetic material evolved in the context of creatures who didn't have language, didn't have culture, and didn't reason deliberately.

What is recent is rarely fully debugged.

Our memory is organized to focus primarily on our own experiences.

Other studies have showed that people are more likely to accept falsehoods if they are distracted or put under time pressure.

Organisms tend to value the present far more than the future.

That which is clumsy is rarely reliable.

In physics, they have laws; in biology, we have gadgets [Francis Crick]

The value of imperfections extends far beyond simple balance, however. Scientifically, every kluge contains a clue to our past; wherever there is a cumbersome solution, there is insight into how nature layered our brain together; it is no exaggeration to say that the history of evolution is a history of overlaid technologies, and kluges help expose the seams.

Washroom soap visibility

My tongue-in-cheek blog on washroom taps is one of my favourites. I recently ran into the pictured soap-refuser. It was firmly fixed to the wall and was completely empty. (I particularly love the keyhole on top. I never knew soap was so prone to being stolen!) The unit was opaque white so I had no clue it was empty. I pressed the tiny nozzle at the bottom and all I got was an even tinier stream of air. Away from the wall, and right next to the taps there were some green-soap dispensers. They were green because the soap they contained was green. I could clearly see one was almost empty and one was almost full.

More lift problems

Reverse numbering?

The Thistle Hotel, Barbican, London.

I hope you don't want floor 7

In a hotel in Beijing. I wonder what the words say? "Please press the buttons gently" perhaps?

Heathrow Blue Screen

Washroom tap psychology

Have you ever been in a washroom and failed to get any water out of a tap? Of course you have. We all have. It happens to me all the damned time.

The taps I hate the most are those stupid infra-red taps. The ones that are supposed to burst into life when you waggle your hands under them. Waggle to the left, waggle to right, in-out, in-out, doing the hokey-kokey. Your occasional random reward, if you're very lucky, is a short dribble of water.

The infra-redness is a ruse - it's fake - the tap is really part of sophisticated psychology experiment. Out of sight a white-coated clipboard-clutching technician is carefully monitoring your rising frustration. A favourite ploy is withholding water once you've dobbed a large blob of soap into your hands. And then watching as you fruitlessly search for a paper towel to wipe away the soap.

Another favourite is doctoring a clearly-full soap-dispenser into a soap-refuser. And of course, setting the force of the air-blower hand-drier to either barely-enough-to-fog-a-mirror or enough-to-lift-a-twelve-stone-man-clean-off-the-ground but never anything in between.

I miss the old-style taps.

British Airways - today you were RUBBISH

I use www.ba.com to book Heathrow-Oslo flights a lot. I just booked another one and accidentally specified a return day of March 20th instead of February 20th. I'm pretty careful about this kind of thing but this time I got caught out, partly because both days are a Saturday. I spotted it immediately and changed it straight away. For a flight costing £265.50 ba charged me an extra £200 which frankly I find outrageous. Their website says to ring 0844 493 0787 for help. I tried that - it's a waste of time. Endless recorded messages saying they're sorry lots of passengers have been separated from the luggage because of the snow. But no human being.

I'm reminded of something Jeff Bezos said recently - that there were two kinds of companies; those that work to charge you more, and those that work to charge you less. All my previous Heathrow-Oslo flights have been for one week. Suddenly their system was being asked for a much longer stay. It surely wouldn't take a lot of effort to get the system to spot that sudden difference and before accepting the booking simply say "we've noticed your booking is for a longer period than usual - are you sure it's correct". If their system had done that I would have been very impressed. I would have told my friends. But it didn't. Instead it charged me an extra £200.

BOSE - today you were RUBBISH

I bought a pair of BOSE noise canceling headphones at Oslo airport on 29th August. My first BOSE purchase. The left earphone has stopped working. I rang the service number and briefly explained the situation. The assistant asked for some information, some of which I'd just told her. She typed into a computer and her computer crashed. She didn't know what to do so she put me on hold. While I waited I replied to a couple of emails, made an entry to my wiki, and started reading from a book. Then she was back. She apologised. She told me that everyone's computer has crashed! She asks me for the information again. I provide it again. She types it in again. It doesn't crash this time!

Then she asks for the serial number. "Where is that?" I say. "What kind of headphones have you bought?" she says. "How can I tell?" I say. It seems you can't tell by looking at them - they have a minimalist design with only the words BOSE on the headphones. "Try looking inside the ear cushion" she says. I can see a number in the left one. I start reading it out. "No that's not it". Eh? You have a serial number in both earphones but only one is the actual one? Are you trying to be rubbish I wonder. So I look in the other ear cushion. Indeed - another number. So long and so small I can't read it. So I put my glasses on and read it out. "Ah" she says that's the such-and-such model. "They're discontinued". Why am I not surprised. She can't do a like for like replacement for that. So they'll replace it with the nearest equivalent. But before they can do that they'll post me an audio cable - could I try the new cable to see if that fixes it? it will be delivered in 5-7 working days, all I have to do is sign for it. If I'm not in when they deliver it they'll put a note through the door so I know which depot to drive to pick them up from. By now I'm losing my patience. I ask if she's really telling me I'm going to have to stay in all day to receive an audio cable that in all probability won't solve my problem and is merely creating extra weeks when I have no working BOSE headphones despite having paid over £200 for them only 2 months ago? And besides that I won't be in anyway since I'll be in another country on business. On business without my BOSE headphones. She says she'll ask someone. I'm on hold again. No, she was wrong. They'll send them regular post. They don't have to be signed for. She's very sorry but there's nothing else she can do. That's what she has to do. I'm so fed up with BOSE at this point I can't face wasting anymore of my time so I tell her to send the damn audio cable.

Do BOSE think that people willing to pay £200 for a supposed quality pair of headphones value their time so little that they're happy to waste even more of it just because the headphones don't work?

BOSE products are expensive. They are pitched as high quality products. My experience today tells me their customer service computers and their customer service process is not high quality. I don't in any way blame the girl on the phone. She's trapped inside a rubbish system, forced to follow rigid procedures like a robot.

BOSE, today you were RUBBISH.

When technology pisses me off (5)

I went into my local Orange shop today. I simply wanted to upgrade my phone to one with a higher resolution camera. The assistant asked me some details and typed them into a computer. Nothing happened. She asked a colleague if the computer was working. He said try rebooting it. So she did. Then she asked me the same details again. And typed them in again. Still not working. Long pause with nothing happening. Decided not to get frustrated. Looked for a chair to sit down while I waited. No chairs. Sat on a low shelf instead. She asked me for the same details for a third time. This time I wrote them on a piece of paper. I decided to mention something I hadn't been asked - that I was on the Virgin tariff. That seemed to be an important piece of information and the computer was abandoned as she tried to ring someone for help. She couldn't get through. I went to sit down again. She kept trying. Eventually she got through. She passed the phone to me. The man on the other end asked for the same information for a fourth time. Then he asked me the post code of the shop I was in! I remained calm and handed the phone back to the assistant. I sat down again. The call ended. After all that I was told I couldn't upgrade my phone unless I switched to a different tariff. I was near the end of my tether by this point but I decided to at least look at the new tariffs. All more expensive than the one I'm one. I said simply "It's not going to happen. You've lost a sale." and walked out. Orange - today you were RUBBISH.

When technology pisses me off (3)

This time it's a digital camera. Scroll through the photos on the camera and you can see them all. Connect to a Windows XP laptop and only some of them appear. If you're involved in making technology I plead with you to at least make it do the basics correctly. If it does the basics correctly I can forgive you when rarely used extra frills don't work. What's unforgivable is when the basics don't work.

Quite by chance, I see David Hansson of Ruby on Rails fame is twittering he's having numerous problems making calls from his iPhone. Same thing. RUBBISH.

When technology pisses me off (2)

A Buzz Lightyear DVD this time. My son Patrick has Asperger's Syndrome. He likes to watch the same film over and over again. He likes to watch the film over and over again. Not the adverts. Going to the cinema is not like watching a DVD at home. DVD's that won't let you skip the adverts when you're watching the DVD for the umpteenth time are RUBBISH

When technology pisses me off (1)

I've just come back from a great days fishing on the river Wye with my mate Brian. To get to the spot we tried to use a sat-nav. A Garmin something or other. It was Brian's. I don't have a sat-nav because on the few occasions I've used one in the past they have been universally rubbish. I'm sure when the work they're great - it's just that they've failed to work for me with sufficient regularity that they no longer get a chance. And this time it was more of the same. Brian spent about 20 minutes trying to enter GL17 9NU, the post-code of our destination. It refused to let him enter the post-code. He typed in GL1 (on a keyboard display that was not qwerty and consequently slowed you down, why?) and it jumped to a screen showing GL16 something or other. Various other options were tried. Nope. It flatly refused to play ball. I've learned that if something's not working there's no point carrying on trying to force it to work. That very rarely works. So we abandoned it and headed off in the general direction relying on good old paper map technology. Much later, quite by chance, we discovered what was going on. The previous sat-nav trip was for our first days fishing in Builth Wells, which is in Wales. Because of this it seemed to have got stuck in Wales. It was only accepting post-codes in Wales. Why doesn't it just let you enter the post-code you want to enter and then see if that post-code is in Wales or England? RUBBISH.