·:[ Jason On A Shtick ]:·
• • • • •

After a year and a half as an IT director, something has happened that I never imagined: I don’t really like technology anymore.

When I first took the job, it was a big challenge and I was up for it.  The school had some aging infrastructure and older software; it was an appealing idea to design a fresh strategy.  But after a while, it became clear that the only strategy one can have with technology is to mount a continuous battle of keeping it updated.  There is no stable, settled mode – there is always something new, something to update, something to fix.  The decisions we end up making are less about what will be beneficial and more about what we can live without or what can wait to be fixed.

This constant churn is made worse by the realization that technology is no longer simple for anyone.  Nothing is easy – even a new computer right out of the box is daunting for most people.  It will surely be missing something that they need or they won’t be able to figure out how to use it.  And nothing seems to work on the first try.  We find ourselves taking second and third passes at things that should be simple, and we are the staff that the campus relies on for answers!  If it is hard for us, how can it be easy for  the average user?

Some say that you bring the churn on yourself, that it is your decision to update and upgrade.  But you simply cannot afford to just get things working and leave them alone.  It would be one thing to forgo features and functionality in return for stability.  But in our great software era, you risk the one thing that you absolutely cannot afford to if you stand still: security.  There is always an update or patch that simply must be applied if you want to protect yourself.  And hardware fails – period.  It is inevitable and you must plan for it and deal with it.

Add to all this a budget crunch that brings focus on how many IT people you have, not on what they do to keep things running, and it makes you wonder if you are fighting a battle that can never be won.  We rely more and more on technology for everything, yet we seem to be “pissing up a rope” in trying to manage it all.  How long can you keep that up?  I am getting old and my aim is not that good anymore.