The ABCs of Technology: Good & Bad by Robert S. Swiatek - HTML preview

15. On the Beach

“Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate.” – Alvin Toffler

My days in college weren’t the greatest times except for singing in the glee club. Besides that, there was another time of joy I recall: the semester break. It was a week when we didn’t worry about tests, papers, reading assignments, quizzes or studying. I really looked forward to that time. This especially sticks in my mind for undergraduate days. It was short, but it was a vacation, something we all need. Steven Wright had another gem: Babies don’t need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach. Don’t give me that much credit about matching that last word in his quote and the last one in the chapter title. It was dumb luck. Nevertheless, we all need times away. It’s good for the heart, mind, soul and body.

Because of all the present-day advances in technology, people have more and longer vacations, fewer hours and more siestas. Oh, wait – that’s Europe. Wouldn’t it be great if our country did some smart things in this regard? In a few of my books I’ve advocated a thirty-hour workweek with a minimum wage of fifteen dollars an hour. That was almost eight years ago. Obviously the reduced hours and higher pay results in more people working, happier employees and fewer health problems. There have been too many years of excuses without solutions. Read what I wrote for why this would work, benefiting the workers, big and small business in my 2007 book.

Just like in my college years, the vacation represents starting anew. No one can live without it. There are a few bad things about vacations, especially if you only receive two weeks a year. When you travel on vacation and need another week to recuperate, you may be taking the wrong vacation. There’s another cause: hate of your job. One week is nowhere enough, especially if you return and must catch up on emails and phone messages. The dislike and catching up problems can both solved if people think about it, without the ending of the movie, On the Beach.

A single day at the beach is welcome and an excellent start. I saw an image in my daily web adventures of someone on vacation – it may have been at the beach – but they had an ERD or laptop. Neither belongs there or on any week away, whether it’s in Europe or the Bahamas. Vacation means a time a boss pays his staff for being away and not doing any work. The word also represents a time away from school, work or home. If you search the Internet for the best places for a vacation, you won’t find the office or shop. It’s a good time to not only turn off the technology but to leave it home. Someone else will do your work. You could be fired one way or the other, so stop worrying.

You all know about a bit different time away. It’s related to my cover design software comments a few chapters ago. Many times when you leave a challenge without a solution, returning the next day brings the answer that you couldn’t think of the day before. This is related to the idea of working smart, since thinking is clouded when you’re overworked.

A few years ago when I was a computer programmer, I got a request from a user for a report dealing with percentages. A similar report today might look like this:

The report created some difficulties that weren’t easily resolved. It lists usages on web sites, along with percentages. The access to a site will result in a hit with the sites being Chris, Kelly, Pat, Rene, Whitney and Jamie. Obviously the problem has to do with rounding and I explained that limitation to the user who didn’t buy it. What would you do under these circumstances? There doesn’t seem to be a lot that can be done since the requester wanted that total percent at the bottom to always be 100%, which was obtained by adding the numbers on the right column. All I did was simply change that number at the bottom right so that it was always 100%. I don’t think he knew the difference.

Another option may have been to have my wife bake him some Ex-Lax brownies. He wouldn’t bother me for a while. Another thought might be to have all the percentages having 25 digits to the right of the decimal point. There are so many possibilities that could be used here to have him not bother me.

Let’s look at two more reports:

Note that report A is approximate since the three numbers adding to .99 are rough approximations. Report B is exact since 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 is exactly equal to 1. What does that mean? Each .33 in report A would be more accurate if more decimal places were used. To convert 1/3 to a decimal, use long division, dividing 1 by 3. You may recall that from math class, and I provided the answer for those who cut the lesson.

                              .3333333333 . . .

3

The top number and the one directly underneath it both represent infinite repeating decimals as indicated by the three dots on the right. If we replace the three .33s with .3333333333 . . ., then both reports would be exactly the same and .9999999999 . . . would replace .99. It may be difficult to understand that 1 or 1.0000000000 . . . is exactly equal to the .9999999999 . . ., so I’ll leave that to you. For starters, take the average of the two numbers. If it’s one of the numbers, they’re equal. I think you’ll agree with that conclusion. That’s exactly what occurs. Real math and that of a computer are different because of rounding and our comprehension of the infinite. My changing of the total percentage in the Access Report wasn’t so radical, after all. It made sense.

Returning to the traveling salesman challenge, Maria and Andrew think they might have a solution, without the computer or only limited use of it. They looked at the graph of all the points representing places. Maria began at the top and moved down keeping to the outer portion, then proceeding to the next one beneath it on the circumference. She continued this outer clockwise approach until reaching close to the top. Then she moved inside but did so counterclockwise, staying left, selecting the closest point. Then she would continue counter clockwise moves as before, repeating this idea until every point was covered. The 99 distances were calculated giving a total distance covered.

Andrew’s approach was somewhat similar except his method used a slight zigzag scheme. Again this was continued until all places were accounted for. The total distance was determined and whichever of the Maria and Andrew’s numbers was lower was used. Their boss was pleased that they had come up with an answer. A few other thoughts were raised about the problem. Why not hire nine more salesmen, giving people jobs or even bringing the total number to twenty? With the latter choice, each man or woman only had to consider five combinations – the gigantic number now becomes 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 or 120 possibilities. Even a slow computer could handle that.

We need to return to forty-hour workweeks although thirty would be a better idea. The idea of 24/7 can only result in crowded doctors’ offices and hospitals. It’s really dumb since banks work on a five-day business week, even though they’re open on Saturday. Actually it’s more like seven if you consider ATM machines and online banking. I prefer a 6/5 week: six hours a day and five days each week. Everyone I talk to agrees. Increase the number of vacation days as well. Being connected can only result in power outages.   

The song, “On the beach” is on the soundtrack of the 1959 movie of the same name. I’m not sure if that was the version I heard so many years ago on the radio, which I really liked. The vocal sound of that tune was so much more pleasant than the flick, which was about the end of the world. It starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins.