Reasons that never were (Update: IGNORE)
Posted: February 16th, 2006 | 6 Comments »UPDATE: I think I’ve got enough of this wrong that this whole post should have a line through it. My apologies to Mr Godin, to whose excellent work I have done a great disservice. My only excuse was that I put this out in the middle of an incredibly hectic work day, when clearly I should have been less rushed about things…
Still in the process of blog moving, still about to blog about Ning, etc. But until then, a huge glaring fish in a bucket: Seth Godin’s post on legacy reasons. Lots of trackbacks, none of which seem to have caught on that it must be some kind of hoax.
The reason about Blockbuster? Not true. (UPDATE: Still checking this one.)
The reason about places of work? Obviously not true. (UPDATE: Not so sure. I’m thinking about organisational and output-gathering benefits as primary rather than power source, though clearly the power source also has something to do with it. Anyone want to supply evidence of either (which I completely lack, go me)? I’m still interested in this one, though I’m probably completely wrong.)
The reason about typewriter keys? Famously not true. (UPDATE: Boy, was I wrong. And even worse, I didn’t read the linked article properly, which clearly agrees with Seth, as Paul points out below.)
The reason about SUVs? True.
So, what’s Seth really asking?
(Addendum: I should add that the above question is not one of those A-list style pretending-to-know-the-answer-to-a-rhetorical thing. I have no idea what he’s really asking, or even if he knows that half of his reasons are bollocks. But, as Nick has already shown in the comments, it’s a fun thing to think about.)
Because SUVs are classed as light trucks, they have looser fuel economy standards (CAFE standards): 20.7mpg as opposed to 27.5mpg for passenger cars. This, plus the truck frame, makes them cheaper to produce.
What’s he really asking? Well, it could be that ‘the way things are done’ is tradition, rather than best practice. As I said at college, traditions exist because people haven’t complained loudly enough. But given that his examples aren’t that accurate, he may be saying that rationales are often made up by others after the fact. Like the rationale behind the post.
Or not.
Er, doesn’t that Economist article about typewriters say that the claims of Dvorak’s efficiency over QUERTY is the real myth? Certainly neither it nor Wikipedia disputes that in early typewriters there was a problem with sticking keys.
This article on the disputed superiority of Dvorak defends QWERTY, but still says that:
Since Qwerty was designed to accomplish this now obsolete mechanical requirement, maximizing speed was not an explicit objective. Some authors even claim that the keyboard is actually configured to minimize speed since decreasing speed would have been one way to avoid the jamming of the typewriter.
And this in an article defending the layout!
I also suspect that, yes, offices exist because factories existed, and factories did have to be centralised because power and machinery weren’t distributable. (You’ve seen the size of a steam engine, right?)
If humanity had somehow moved directly from farming (inherently distributed) to a “knowledge economy” maybe we would all be working from our farms.
My preview-fu is weak. The URL I posted that got eaten was http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
QWERTY was definitely a mechanical decision to limit jamming.
Shared workplaces based on power sources? Nah. If you look at Pepys’ Diary, it’s easy to see that he worked where he worked because it was near a power source of a different kind: i.e. political power.
Now, the factory (short for ‘manufactory’)? Still dubious. You only need to watch Time Team to see that large ‘collective workshops’ were common in Roman Britain, pooling resources and output opportunities without sharing power. (They were a bit like modern industrial estates.) Certainly, there was a period of artisan manufacture before the industrial revolution, where spinners or weavers or potters did piecework from home, and that was supplanted by mass production, planned housing etc.
But the corporate/clerical office isn’t a descendent of the cotton-mill, by any stretch.
Paul: I _wish_ we worked from farms. Sigh. Some conveniences would go but there’s a _lot_ of other stuff which would work better.
Yoz: I think you need to do something about your comment spam.
If we ship people off to “factories” to work, why do we ship them off to “factories” to educate them? It’s not as if they all learn the same way and from the same starting point, is it? There’d be no point in handing out marks and report cards if that were so.
Re: Blockbuster — I don’t know about the exact sequence, but it’s certainly true that VHS copies used to cost *MUCH* more at release. Before the adoption of revenue-sharing and/or “sell-through” pricing, studios looked to recoup their portion of potential rental money upfront.
See VideoBusiness.com:
“The ’90s brought rising rental prices that topped out above $100 for a VHS copy…”
– http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6276965