Post Conscious

Continuing from my previous post about Cushions, I wrote a piece for a student-led newspaper at the Institute. Here goes:

I am sitting in front of a computer in one of the Institute’s computer labs. It doesn’t take forever to log in but it does take enough time to form thoughts about how things could be different and better. After some time I could almost see the vague allegory dancing in front of my eyes; working on these computers can give you a gist of how questionable some things actually are.

The bulk of the time that is needed to log in to the desktop involves the process of policy and services. It is a very slow one and it’s hard to tell what’s going on here since you can’t access the root of this problem – I wish things were more transparent.

Eventually I get in, after such a long wait, and I am greeted by important messages. One of which telling me that I need to start using my designated Institute e-mail address so that the Institute could have a proper medium on which to contact me officially. I have not been here long but it does suggest to me that in the past, perhaps there have been a lack of communication. It’s quite unfair to enforce this in my opinion, Outlook Web Access is behind the times and very rigid compared to most web mail systems. I wonder how many people are capable of setting up e-mail forwarding and the alternative of setting up a program for your e-mails of course does not give you the portability of web access.

Getting this out of the way I can at finally start using the computer. I am presented with an aesthetically pleasing workspace; the polished looks of the desktop which by the way would require more computer resources to run. I am amused by this because there is no functionality whatsoever in fancy looking desktops, in fact no matter how fast a computer is, it would end up running at a less optimal capacity when compared to one that is run without any unnecessary resource hogs. I wonder too at the choice of Internet Explorer over Firefox or Chrome – it is widely held that the former, IE (Internet Explorer!), have security issues and is less efficient than it’s latter counterparts.

On occasions I am caught off guard by some interruption of an automated function, asking me if I need to create an Ink Layer amongst other ‘useful tools’ this computer is telling me it has. It was as if this computer thinks it knows better than me, acting like a guide to try and dictate my actions in some way. This is alright and can be ignored but it does beg the question who wanted them there in the first place. The most you ever see people do is work on a word processor. Of course you don’t get to see a lot though, because there aren’t enough computers.

I am almost done and there is one thing left to do – I have to print. This is perhaps the worst part (if you are already used to the slow log in) but is one I optimistically look forward to. This is the time where I take the opportunity to validate my frustrations by immersing myself in the grunts of the bewildered masses who congregate at the printers. Amidst all the sophisticated helter skelter, you arrive at an almost primitive conclusion to your IT experience. Papers get lost here, probably taken by someone else who is equally confused by the disorganized printing process. Even if you get it right, there is still a nagging feeling that you have to check every page of the one hundred you printed because you are never really assured. After which I am left to wonder why they had not let me do multi-page printing or printing on both sides to save paper, ink, time, trees and everyone’s conscience.

Upon leaving, I get a rush of feeling mostly that I’m glad the ordeal is over. I begin to wonder why, like the computers, resources are mismanaged here. I asked a technician about this, he couldn’t give me an answer and instead gave me a piece of paper where I can write my suggestions down (more paper). Who’s in-tray will this arrive at? What kind of answer will I get? I am apprehensive at this kind of correspondence, the bureaucratic and template response type. I exit the library past the barriers, into the aesthetically pleasing open space of the Institute and suddenly forget all that I had thought about.