Resistance to Change

After completing an SL viewer upgrade so minor that The Lab didn't even mention it, I found that part of my workflow suddenly changed. After typing in my password I usually just tapped the Enter key on my keyboard and the log-in process started. Not since the upgrade. More than a few times now I've hit Enter and switched to another window to do something while logging in only to look a few moments later to see the static viewer screen as if I had done nothing. Once, I totally forgot I had even tried to log in at all. Almost immediately I thought about creating a JIRA for the issue but after remembering that I have NEVER had a successful JIRA and being distracted by some string, I thought "Well, it is a little change. I can get used to it. It's not like when they took away the slide out  panels that I really loved and had to take a long time to re-learn."

Yes, even I have a resistance to change, however I'm extremely happy to know that I can adopt, adapt, and improve, unlike so many that use computer technology. Take, for example, the recent upgrade from Apple iTunes 10 to version 11. Within minutes the Twittersphere was awash with tips to bring back "missing features" and not long after reviews were published with more tips and then even whole articles like "5 Tips to Make iTunes 11 Look Normal Again" from OSXDaily here.

Normal? What they should have titled the article is "5 Tips to Make iTunes 11 Look Like What You Got Used To Since the Last Change You Complained About." At least two of the tips (possibly three, but I don't have v10.x to check any more) were available options in past renditions of the popular software. Yet fanboys – fancy newspeak for curmudgeons – totally ignored the facts. This, too, happens with the Second Life viewers, official and otherwise.

It took me a couple weeks to become proficient with using the v2 interface when it was introduced but I swear it look less than 15 minutes after it was introduced for me to find someone vehemently against it in-world. The viewer had been out less than half a day. I deny that even software designers and professional reviewers could give  an application a thorough workout in such a short time.

And now that Third Party Viewer (TPV) developers have been incorporating v2 designs into their efforts (by force, admittedly) the hue and cry over the change is much quieter. Fanboys of the TPV products can still hurl invectives and demonstrate massive intolerance toward other products, but fortunately their numbers seem to be smaller now. As I listen in the Macintosh Users group chat, the sense of co-operation seems to have increased with fewer users being rude over viewer choices. I also encounter fewer people in Infohubs and help places spreading the vitriol once common. Maybe we are becoming less resistant to change?

I think it would best that when change occurs, we remember the words of Mahatma Gandhi: "Everybody is right from their own point of view, but it is not impossible that everyone is wrong."

And now for something completely different: A nude girl on a beach ...