Dept. of Minor Observations
A repository of bulletins, field reports, working papers, and notices concerning small thoughts, odd details, internet archaeology, abandoned drafts, and gentle critiques of modern digital culture. Items are classified, stamped, and filed accordingly.
On software that remembers your preferences and then doesn't
Every application that can be configured promises to remember your
preferences. Some keep this promise. Others remember preferences for a
period of months and then, following an update, return to defaults
with no explanation.
We re-configure the application. The preferences are saved.
Some time later, they are gone again.
This is not a technical failure. It is experienced as
a character trait. The software is forgetful, in ways we can all
be forgetful, and in ways that seem almost
personal.
The Department notes that this attribution of character to
software is both irrational and entirely understandable.
Report on the moment before a video call begins
The brief moment of time between joining a video call and the other participants
appearing has a specific quality that the Department has not seen
named. The modeo? The momeo? The vidment? You are visible to no one. You can see yourself in the small preview window. You make some small adjustments.
It is the only moment in the working day when you are an audience for
your own professional presentation, without the bigger distractions of the
meeting itself. The Department reports on claims that people
use this interval to change their expression from the one they
actually have to the one they intend to project. It can be described as
"putting on that face."
The Department notes this without judgment. The preparation of a face
for professional presentation is not new. The mirror is simply now in
the corner of the screen, and available throughout.
On streets that are named after things that are no longer there
Mill Road. Forge Lane. Orchard Close. Tannery Court. Bakehouse Close.
These street names record a working landscape that has been entirely
replaced by the streets themselves. The mill is gone, the road remains,
still named after it. The forge, the tannery, the
bakehouse, all gone. The orchard is definitely no longer close. Sometimes these have not been there for centuries.
The Department finds this form of accidental memorial curious. No
one decided to commemorate these things. The names were once functional
then they became decorative and now they are historical without having
any history. The landscape is annotated, if you give it
enough time.
Revised Notice: On "Unlimited"
Revised following the acquisition of new evidence.
The Department's original draft held that "unlimited," as used in
subscription services, telecommunications contracts and buffet
restaurants was plainly false. This position has been
moderated.
The revised position sees that "unlimited" in commercial contexts typically means
"limited in ways that will not affect most people most of the time."
It is a statistical claim masquerading as an absolute one. The limit
exists. It is there. It has been set above the threshold of "normal" use and therefore,
practically speaking, not encountered.
The Department's concern was with the word. The Department now
acknowledges that the word is doing some real work. It is simply not
doing the work that the word usually does. This distinction is small
enough that most people will never notice it, which is exactly the point.
On the saved document that is not the most recent version
At some point between version three and the final submission, you
saved over the wrong file. The changes made in the last two hours are
in a document called "final_v2_ACTUAL_revised_USE_THIS.docx" which
does not currently exist.
The Department is not recording your failure. It is recording a near-
universal experience. The naming of versions is a problem that has
been solved, many times, by version control software, and the
solution has been available for decades, and yet the problem still persists
regardless, because the solution requires a habit while the problem
does not.
The Department notes that many solved problems remain unsolved in
practice, and that the distance between a solution existing and a
solution being used is one of the greatest gaps in modern life.
On instructions that assume a previous step was completed
Step four of many instruction manuals, help documents, and setup
guides assumes that step three was successfully completed. Step three
assumed the same of step two. Step two assumed that the person has already arrived with
the preconditions that the instructions did not think to specify because,
to the person who wrote them, those conditions were simply the world around them.
The gap is not negligence. It is the gap between already knowing how to do
something and knowing what it is like to not know how to do something.
These are different cognitive positions, and moving between them is much
harder than it appears.
The Department notes this is always a problem in the transfer of
knowledge, and is not confined to instruction manuals. And we leave the
observation there.
Notes on the end of the Internet Archive entry
Every website has, or will have, a final snapshot in the Wayback
Machine. A last crawl after which no further versions are recorded. It will be the result of a variety of reasons, because the site was taken down, the domain lapsed, or the content moved somewhere else and this address was quietly retired.
The final snapshot is not marked as final. It can't be. It looks identical to every
other snapshot. You only know it is the last one because nothing ever appears
after it.
The Department finds this a realistic model for so many endings. Endings
are not announced, they do not look different from the moments before
them and their finality is only visible in retrospect. From a position
further along the timeline, looking back.
On the phrase "We value your privacy"
The sentence "we value your privacy" appears at the top of documents
whose entire purpose is to describe the circumstances under which
a respect for privacy will not apply. It is, in this sense, a form of valediction rather
than a policy — a last farewell note to the thing it claims to protect.
The Department has noted that no organisation has ever published a
document beginning "we do not particularly value your privacy". The
absence of this kind of document is, in itself, informative.
Observations on the scroll that ends without warning
Observation: a feed that ends. Not with a message, not with a border, but
with a form of exhaustion — the content simply thins out
and then stops. The person continues scrolling for several seconds after the
content has finished, uncertain whether they have reached the end or
whether a still more distant ending is just loading.
The Department notes that this is a relatively new anxiety. Previous
information formats — books, newspapers, filing cabinets — had fixed endings
that you could feel in your hand. The scroll has removed any physical signal
for conclusion. We can no longer be sure when we are done.
Notice on the use of the word "Journey"
The Department formally registers its observations on the word "journey"
in its application to the act of purchasing software, completing an onboarding
form or selecting a subscription tier.
A journey implies distance, difficulty and a possibility of never
returning. The Department does not dispute that enterprise procurement
can be difficult. It disputes that difficulty of this kind constitutes
a journey in any useful meaningful sense of the word.
The Department suggests "procedure", "process," "experience," and, where
appropriate, "ordeal."