Monday, September 20, 2004

O' web interface, thy blessings be ever so many, BUT..

[metablog warning!]

While web interfaces are accessible, platform independent and mostly reliant
on open standards, and gererally quite handy to use, one BIG problem is the uncanny ability to eat a big potion of work (think 'homework' and 'The Dog'), and still be hungry for more.. One distraught click, and GONE.

"Nonononoo.. I didn't want that! Escape! Regret! Undo! *click-click-click*"

Some more navigating, reloading and restless flickering back and forth through the website, before the bitter realization that the text is beyond rescue, AND that this probably is caused solely by my own very poorly guided action. With the assistance of a interface without the necessary foolproofing, and a solution lacking a basic undo/rollback feature I have given myself a mental equivalent of a good, healthy punch in the face. Stupid, stupid!

Security features like session timeout, being used to avoid unauthorized access to shared computers, have many, many hours of my creative work on its conscoiusness.

This is a source of intense negative vibes in my case, because of the sheer pointlessness of what has happened before my eyes. Written material, of reasonable quality, just disappear by accident of navigation. Here I, the writer, spend some of the most valuable rescource known to man, fractions of my own lifetime, refining, considering and putting to print my own words.

And then, for no good reason the words are lost. Without even a hint of purpose to their brief existence, there have been no audience, no transfer and mating of memes , no good done, with the possible exception of joy on the authors part, however fleeting, derived from work well done.

The text can wery well be re-created, maybe in a even better way than the initial, but the writers motivation, mood, and all stress-related physiological processes take a serious hit.

Data loss in general, and those caused by web interfaces in general, sucks. The only vaguely positive data loss experience I've ever had, was the rapid, successive, catastrophic loss of content on every hard drive in my posession. Weird enough, it felt therapeutic.

The conclusion of this rant must be, beware of data loss, keep backups and save always!

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