Managers took my power circle

Its October, the leaves are falling, the witches are abroad, and I’ve opened the blog up to guest writers again. Yes its Indie October. Throughout October some old favorites among my guests will be returning along with some new voices. And first up the unique and occasionally worrying mind of Andrew ‘Indefatigable’ Hill. A man known for many a strange opinion, some of them seemed to make sense at the time…

Mark

If you have an Android phone you may recently have elected, been badgered or compelled to upgrade to Android 10. For us cynics, any enforced software upgrade to previously perfectly serviceable kit is replete with risks and scant reward.

With a heavy heart and little confidence, I yielded to the regular micro aggressions of polite but persistent ‘notifications’ and pressed update.

Mercifully, after a lot of egg timers and restarts the phone sprang back into life.

But there was something I quickly noticed.

The main screen in Android typically shows a circle drawn around a clock. The circle ticks down to signify battery charge left, like the minute countdown to your weekly programme for Schools & Colleges (it was a thing). This enables the user to quickly, almost subconsciously, keep track of how long is left until your pocket pet of wonderful information becomes a plastic rectangle of uselessness.

Cometh the update, cometh the death of the battery circle. Instead a wispy circle with no apparent function. Why? Why! Why?

This caused me some vexation, why would the owners of Android, Messers Google Inc, make something worse by choice? They got gazillionally rich by coming up with great ideas, often solutions to problems you and I didn’t know even were a problem. That is till they fixed the problem for you. They certainly fixed the lives of Encyclopedia Britannica salesfolk (it was a thing).

Then I had my very own little lightbulb moment. It is really simple. All those quirky folk who thought out of the box in Silicon Valley, made a piece of the gazillonality for themselves and promptly left the box. In place of the innovators, challengers and disrupters came the managers. Managers who struggle to create often instead go for change, for its own sake.

So, it just gets changed.

And you can’t go back.

Ever.

About Andy Hill

Based in North East England, Andy works as a freelance writer and capital market consultant. In other words, a hand to mouth existence scrabbling for paid work. These skills lend themselves with aplomb to the overcrowded world of direct publishing.
Andy’s first work “I Saw You” rocketed to number four, in the prestigious Kindle Love Poetry Top 100 Free chart. Bettered only by Shakespeare, Keats and Shelley in a flush of ego and hubris, Andy splashed out on a new fridge and fly crib, only for those fifteen minutes of fame to evaporate in sixteen minutes.

He has also written for many of the Harvey Duckman Anthologies, including the latest pirate special which is out now the latest of which is out now.