tricksy technology

Technology is logical. Follow the steps correctly and technology will do your bidding. It cannot be temperamental or irrational, and lacks the will required to decide to be uncooperative just for fun.

Theoretically.

In reality, technology tends to be plagued by "temporary glitches" and unexplained quirks that often give the impression that technology is both moody and malicious, and certainly not logical.

For example, when I tried using the automatic blogging tool in flickr to post pictures to my blog it all seemed to go smoothly. It took a couple of attempts to get the sizing right, but after a little tinkering I had the posts just how I wanted, including that the information about the source of the images appeared below the pictures. But then, within minutes, and without my input, the captions disappeared. And I cannot get them back. I've tried editing the posts, but the captions appear in the previews, just not on the actual blog posts. I just cannot figure it out. Grrrr.

I understand (but I could be completely wrong) that this happens because Web technologies rely on complex code. A little mistake in the code here or there means that unexpected mistakes happen, and this is to be expected. Users need to be understanding and patient. But it will help users to be understanding and patient if we are not fed the line that technology is always logical. Technology is tricksy and complicated. It offers some great benefits, but it can also be unreliable, incomprehensible and sometimes unworkable. If you tell people too often to expect that technologies are easy to use, logical and reliable, they will naturally assume that if they can't make them work it must be because they are "not technically minded". And then they may well avoid using them at all.

So, I retract my opening statements. Technology is not logical. Learn to love the "temporary glitches".