[themitigating]

A pencil is a simplisic writing device whereas a computer and its software is significantly more complex. Not to mention it communicates with external devices like mice, keyboard, wifi, website, and email

Mandated software, like security products, don't exist on a pencil because it can steal all your financial data from an external connection.

IT has policies because of past failures and regulations. They are also bogged down because a ticket can take anywhere from 5 mins to many days and it's impossible to accurately predict what frequency of each type of problem will occur from the known set or how long it each will take. Companies hire a decent amount but they also can't over staff a dept just so everyone gets their issues fixed instantly.

Users can't fix their computer most of the time because they don't know how. A pencil either needs to be sharpened, needs to be replaced, or is working. Everyone can be taught how to do those three things in a short amount of time.

One office object that's not a computer and would be a better comparison is the copy machine. It's a troupe about how often they broke.

[pessimizer]

The comment that you're replying to isn't arguing that computers shouldn't be complicated, or that we don't need them to be. It's pointing out that they are complicated, and in a way that leaves most people powerless.

There's no need to run in and defend computers, or security policies.

[danaris]

Except that there is.

Maybe not from korija in particular; you're probably right about their specific intentions writing that post.

But I've seen posts—hell, I've met people in person—that clearly put forward the opinion that computers are a mistake, they're overly complex, and we need to go back to the time before they existed.

Most of the time, this is at least couched in the form of "Aw, man, these computers are just so dang complicated, y'know? I can never get 'em to work right! You know how it is, right?" But there have been multiple occasions where it was much less playful and much more seriously "computers don't help, they only make things worse, I hate them and we should just all go back to pencil and paper."

Poe's Law[0] is around for a reason.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law for those who aren't familiar

[korlja]

I do think computers are a huge net positive.

And for what we need computers to do, there is a necessary, irreducible complexity involved, so there is a limit to how simple things could be even in theory.

But the problem isn't with that necessary complexity per se. It is the lack of knowledge in the responsible upper layers of any organisation about how to deal with that. Computers are complex, as essential as pen and paper (or more) and exhibit highly correlated failure modes (i.e. one faulty update or one trojan takes down all of them, just like a fire burns all your papers). This means that a large amount of resources should be expended to prevent problems from occuring in the first place, because they are usually large-scale and severe. Instead, IT gets the minimum amount of resources to keep up with constant firefighting. Also, risk-prevention is frowned upon, the new shiny or the crap everyone uses always has priority, even if it increases risk. Because nobody ever got fired for buying HAL or something.

[danaris]

Right; exactly. This is the kind of sensible analysis of the situations you described that is needed to actually solve them, rather than just decide that computers were a mistake and throw them out (or, as is much more common, throw up your hands and claim that this is unsolvable).

[themitigating]

The comment isn't saying

"computers are complex unlike a pencil" it's mostly complaints about IT "heavy processes such that even the people in IT who are trying to help are powerless, bogged down in ticket-pushing busywork, and tons and tons of policies that actually do nothing useful."

My defense was attemping to explain they are difficult compared to other office products ait's to be expected.

His comment seems to imply that there's failure in the IT process or the way it's run that cause the issues. In other words "we have a process for pencils that work , why not computers " as if process can be scaled linearly