Surviving for Fun and Profit in Cyberspace

Viewed this way, there is a basic conflict between two opposing principles of techno-operations. On the one hand, we say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” On the other, if we don’t constantly upgrade, we find to our surprise that cyberware turns out to be already broke by default due to plain old obsolescence.

Several more verities to plug into the matrix and keep in mind as you ponder all this:

Designers’ Truths:

• When you design a system for general consumption, you have no idea all of the various ways it’s really going to be used, as illustrated by the guy who told me he races his Subaru and goes shopping in his Porsche!
• You cannot predict all the interactions that are going to occur in a complex system. This is why the Wall Street Journal dart-throwers do so well so much of the time.
• You never have the time or energy to do a “clean-sheet of paper” redesign. You are mostly stuck with sticking newer, shinier band-aids on top of older, moldier band-aids.
• Many good things, as well as the baddies, come from design flaws.
• The flexibility of a system is inversely proportional to its initial ease of use and is directly proportional to the intelligence of the user.
• When a system appears to be working correctly, all you really know is that the sum of the bugs is zero.

Users’ Truths:

• For us in the music business, computers are enabling rather than creative technology. No matter how sexy the hi-tech gloss seems, computers are comparatively prosaic, clunky tools. They don’t help us be creative – they do help us do donkey work.
• We’re trying to do the same quality of work done in highly developed major studios for 1% of the hardware cost. Some of those savings are simply displaced costs that show up instead as dramatically higher learning, operations and maintenance costs.
• There is no such thing as 100% efficiency, especially in cyber-economics. We cannot avoid wasting money in the process of developing, maintaining and expanding our cybertools.
• The flexibility of a system is inversely proportional to its ease of use and directly proportional to the intelligence of the designer.
• Finally, at some point you’ve got to belly up to the bar and start drinking! You can’t just spend forever planning the evening’s fun. And once you start, you’ve got to expect to deviate from your game plan – it’s called “hanging loose.” Things change, plans go awry, and Plans B through Z are almost always called for.

OK, here’s my top ten list of what ya gotta do:

1. Recognize that, no matter what the customer support guy says, you can’t freeze time.

2. Try to limit the number of software chunks you become expert in. Don’t try to be Master of the Universe: you’ll just become another jackass. If you’re gonna be cutting-edge, well, learn to be very focused and conservative in your cutting-edge-ness.

3. Simplify your techno-operations whenever you can. Don’t let the band-aids on the band-aids get away from you. Beware of Wondertools®.

4. Try to maintain communications with your suppliers. Let ‘em know what works, what doesn’t, for you. Try to share with them the realities of your situation. Try not to get bugged if they don’t seem to be paying attention. If they really don’t pay attention over the longer run, don’t worry, you’ll just get new suppliers!

5. Be mentally prepared to trade operational simplicity for flexibility and vice versa.

6. Be mentally prepared to spend lots of time and money in inversely-related proportions.

7A. Don’t let hyperchange psych you out. Assimilate and learn to use your system for your purposes, knowing full well that it was obsolete out of the box and that, musically speaking, that doesn’t matter at all. Accept that you’ll pay a price at some point in the future when you simply have to upgrade with plenty o’pain and suffering, but that in the meantime, your job is making music, not change.

7B. Know that hyperchange is a technological phenomenon, not an artistic one. Music isn’t really subject to it - styles and aesthetics mostly evolve slowly, over quarter-century generations. That boiling techno-froth doesn’t really have much to do with your musical vision.

8. Building your craft as an artist is a BIG project. It takes a heap of training and experience to become a really good musician. It’ll take a similar heap to become equally adept at computers. Often, it’s cheaper to hire a computer geek instead, for the brief amount of time you really such enabling help. Try to resist the temptation to become both a great musician and a computer geek, unless you really want a good day gig!

9. Keep your focus on your real goal: making music.

10. Finally, the real problem, sadly, is that we have to make money to survive, and we’ve got finite time in which to do it. You’ve got to balance those realities against your artistic goals. Use the computer to help – not to get in the way!

Happy installs, both Custom and EZ!

Dave Moulton would like to thank Paul Lehrman of UMass Lowell, Ron Mann of Sun Microsystems and Dave Lebolt of Digidesign for providing the true parts of this article. Dave’s responsible for the fiction.