Wait, Don't Push That Button

My wife pointed out to me that her aunt and uncle had lots of trouble dealing with their online life because they didn't believe they could recover from any mistake.

Keep in mind that we have a totally electronic household of my wife's creation. Boxes arrive at our doorstep every day and when they are not right they get fixed. A few minutes each day confirms that goods and money are flowing as expected.

But I know uncle's feeling. A colleague recently deployed a program that would automate the complicated correspondence we conducted with 50 teams using email, spreadsheets and calendar invites last year. This year I could just push buttons, but which ones? The labeling seemed ambiguous.

Sidney Dekker, et. al. have convinced me that things will always go wrong and that is just how the cyborg world we have built works. wikipedia

I found the staging implementation of my new tool and pushed buttons there until I understood what was being done on my behalf. I also found and read the docs that had been written on my behalf which are now safely bookmarked in my private wiki.

My wife also explained to her uncle that they were running out of printer ink every week because they were printing every receipt, correspondence and directions and unnecessarily saving the paper for seven years.

I hope she is right.