Remote Rage and the end of Compliance Productivity
The cool new clock radio I got at Costco had not one, but two iPhone docks. This was very good because I no longer needed to play the relationship game of chicken that’s required when prioritizing whose phone gets juice overnight. It also came with another feature that I would have thought cool years ago, but today it infuriated me. What feature could possibly illicit anger in a clock radio? A remote control!
The first remote I ever saw and used was for my Grandmother’s Zenith TV in the early sixties. The TV was fashionably modern wrapped in white plastic on a pod base. It was wicked, and it had a clicker! While being the youngest by 3 years left me with very little time in command of this wonderful device, it was empowering. I wanted a different channel-bingo! More volume-presto! It was fantastic. It was a reason to go to Grandmas, as our own home would remain remote deprived for a number of years.
As the 70’s gave way to the 80’s we saw cable and VCR’s come into our homes. Video killed the radio star on MTV, and we had the ability to record our favorite shows and watch them until the tapes wore out. In the early days these units were, like the TV’s before them, remote-less, but that was to change. By the end of the 80’s no new units were produced without a remote, and we were on the cusp of the next big breakthrough.
Star Wars was the first film shown with Dolby Surround Sound in 1977. It took nearly 15 years for this to find its way into our homes, but by the early 90’s it was arriving in force. How does this history relate to my clock radio?
Over this period of time we experienced a remote explosion, followed by a features race. Suffice it to say, I view these as bad. To watch TV today requires 6 remote controls with well over 300 buttons. Most of these buttons have two or more alternate functions, leaving me with well over 1000 combinations. I use the word combination on purpose, because figuring out how to watch something often feels more like safe cracking than a simple choice. This has left me with what I call ‘remote rage’.
The primary source of this rage is the desire to do something simple, confounded by the technology that’s supposed to help. Those simple acts that I’d performed flawlessly in 1971, having never seen a remote before, were actions that had led to feelings of empowerment and awe. Today, for me to pick up a remote and attempt to change the channel or adjust the volume, activities that constitute a full 99.999% of all remote usage, I have a 1 in 6 chance of picking up the right remote.
Each of these remotes, whose buttons have likely been pushed inadvertently when throwing it into a basket or to a family member, typically has up to 5 devices that it could control. This math leaves me with a 3% probability of getting it right the first time, or 97% chance of not. Rolling the dice another time doesn’t dramatically improve my odds. Rather than empowerment and awe, I’m now left with feelings of ‘remote rage’.
The reason for sharing this, is that as computer software has exploded over the last decades we’re experiencing a very similar dynamic in which ‘additional applications’ are simply not the answer in the same way that additional remotes are not. The cognitive complexity is hindering the same challenges we’re spending money to solve. A recent Deloitte study shows that increased investments in compliance are not having corresponding returns in improved controls and risk reduction. I offer it up for consideration, are the issues of remote rage and the end of compliance productivity related? I for one think they are intimately related at a human level.
Photo credit: redjar
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