Passing on Passion

Stop it. Just stop it.

Microsoft has a quality it seeks in employees. It is "passion for technology". For a while, I didn't understand what that really meant. Does it mean that you love new stuff? New cell phones, new computers, new PDAs, or Blackberries, or Ipods, or whatever the flavor of the day is.

That is part of it, but really, they mean something quite different. Think about it. What is technology? Technology is the application of science to make products. But there's nothing that says the product has to be the same as a competitor's product. I have a Nokia cell phone. It works pretty much like other Nokia cell phones, at least in it's basic functionality. If I buy another model of Nokia, I know basically how to make it work.

But, if I get a Motorola, or some other make, I have to relearn how to use the cell phone. I have to figure out how to enter in numbers, how to retrieve messages, etc. This isn't hard, but I can't use my knowledge of how to operate Nokia phones to use a Motorola. I believe passion for technology means the passion to learn crap like this. Technology companies want to be distinctive, so they insist on doing different things with their product, to make it different from some other product, and it only serves to confuse customers who must learn yet another way of doing something.

Think about the old rotary phones. Pretty much, they all behaved the same. Even with touch tone phones, they all behaved the same. You didn't care if you had one make of phone or another (at least, once you could buy phones instead of leasing them from Bell). But now, every new advance in technology comes with it's own arcane set of rules. Can someone come out with an MP3 player that behaves just like Ipod? Probably not. There might be patent issues, or just the desire to be different from Apple.

This kind of passion is ill-placed. It forces people to learn new things, without really learning new things. It's so nice that cars basically are the same. Steering wheel, speedometer, gas pedal, brakes, windshield wipers, etc. If the interface were designed by cell phone manufacturers, you'd see things move all over. You'd step into a car wondering where the brakes are located why the steering wheel is not a wheel.

More frustrating than this kind of "passion for technology" (which is desire to learn whatever crap folks write, with bad documentation) is the folks who write the Head First series. To be fair, I think these people write great books. It really is different from the standard books about programming. But they also have a blog where they talk about creating passionate users.

Augh! Stop!

Somehow people in technology have decided passion is the answer for everything. Have they suddenly become sports enthusiasts? Bring in your "A" game. You have to step it up! Like the desire of parents to ensure the happiness of their children, somehow technologists believe passion is key for I-dont-know-who. The fact of the matter is that kids aren't going to be perpetually happy, and there's nothing wrong with being depressed, angry, or what-have-you some of the time. You can't expect people to be perpetually passionate. Being passionate is probably even more abnormal than being happy.

When I say "abnormal", I don't mean it in a negative way. I just mean, it is not typical or ordinary, and to expect passion from the masses is to expect some characteristic that is not typical for the average person, nor something, I believe, that you can easily rouse.

Perhaps what is most annoying about the Head First blog is the smugness which the blog is written, as if the authors are discovering stuff that you don't know. For example, they say "Asians and Americans think differently!". Do they? How much investigation did you put into this? Sure it's clever to note there are differences, but to make blanket conclusions is silly. I don't mind these observations. I do mind the "passionate" way it's made.

Too much passion leads to an absence of reason, and people should think, question, and draw their own conclusions. However, thinking is the opposite of passion which requires excitement, often bypassing rationality.

So, gentleman and gentlewoman, chill on this passion thing.