Developing Usable Experiences

The Internet as Scaffolding

September 4th, 2008 10:57 pm —  12 views

My day job is approaching a milestone that has my entire team working like daemons1. The schedule is filthy aggressive and we’re all furiously focused on hitting the green instead of the drop zone. Needless to say, my days are more than interesting2. They’re flat-out stupid for 10+ hours. Though I stayed later today and was able to focus on some sysadmin stuff before I got a call to giddyup home. Thankfully.

I’ve never been much of a list person. My lists are more like clouds. Prioritizing is challenging for me because whatever is actually happening at the moment tends to get my attention and is thus considered a priority. I’m learning the Aikido moves required to deal with managing some of what comes at me, but still I struggle. Things happen and you have to react. Put your hand on a hot stove and you have to pull away…NOW.

I circled some classwork tonight. Studying, reviewing, pondering what needs to be done and thinking about when I’ll have time to do it. You’d think I could have been doing something instead of pondering. That may be true. But the circling approach tends to afford a more calm and certain arrival. This I learned from The Farmer3.

While I was configuring a servlet container in a test environment as practice for doing the same in production environment, I found myself constantly running searches trying to find answers or clues to the problems I was encountering. Sometimes forums and discussion boards would provide sufficient “scent” for me to move forward. Other times I’d have to spend many minutes reading manual pages or tutorials. My reliance…nay, my dependence, on the immediate and accessible resource the Internet provides is a scaffolding allowing me to reach higher. Seriously though, I’d be screwed without it. And yes, scaffold is a funny word.

Image: Taken on the way to class this week, it’s the graduate library entrance with the U.S. flag reflected in its windows. Libraries have long provided the scaffolding to learning that the innernets are supplementing/replacing for many people.

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  1. As programmers tasked with solving problems and building applications handed down, we are sort of like background processes. Courtesy laugh please. [↩]
  2. They’re terribly nerdy so I’m skirting some of the details to spare y’all. [↩]
  3. It took me awhile to appreciate this approach…whether intentional or not…the fact of it happening always made me think. [↩]

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