Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal refurbished some decades-old observations under the title “The 6 Laws of Technology Everyone Should Know.” (Example: “Technology is a very human activity.”)
That list, however, lacked some modern Laws of Technology that, IMHO, are far more profound and meaningful. Here they are:
Law #1: Big brother is watching, along with 273 of his siblings and an unemployed college dropout living in his parent’s basement in Parma, Ohio.
Law #2: The actual battery life of your phone is always less than one half what the manufacturer claims it to be.
Law #3: As technology firms grow larger they either become cable providers or start behaving like them.
Law #4: Each new feature added to a product adds diminishing value and increasing complexity. Corollary 1: After release 5.0 that complexity creates a steady state where fixing one bug creates another bug. Corollary 2: After release 10.0 fixing one bug creates at least two additional bugs. (E.g. Windows, iOS, Mac OS)
Law #5: Engineers inevitably design technology that is easy for engineers to use. Corollary: if you are not an engineer, all technology will eventually make you mutter “WTF?” under your breath.
Law #6: Your IT support person thinks you’re an idiot.
Law #7: “Labor saving” device are designed to foist labor onto the customer. Corollary: “Time saving” devices are designed to eliminate your free time.
Law #8: Technical support lines play irritating music and obnoxious up-sell ads because they’re hoping you’ll hang up and self-service using their website which contains a useless FAQ, an indecipherable user manual, and a hopelessly impenetrable customer-run forum.
Law #9: The intellectual and social value of a blog post is inversely proportional to the clickability of its title.
Readers: What Laws of Technology did I miss? Tweet me @Sales_Source and I’ll post the best ones later in the week.