Tim not learning from his federal brethren

Tim Hudak has not learned from Steve, Tony, or dead Jim, how to sell government service cuts to the voters.

The first rule is never to tell them that government services will be cut. You have to tell them that it's all just efficiencies and streamlining of backoffice work.

You also don't tell them how many government employees you're going to fire. You talk about reducing staff through attrition. Like everyone just decides to take one of those lower paying private sector jobs or retire on their big fat gold plated pension. You certainly don't come straight out with a scary number like a hundred thousand jobs eliminated.

And you absolutely don't tell the middle class parent that you're going to sack their kid's teacher, or that their 4 year old's Junior Kindergarten class is going to have unsafe staffing levels.

As with the union busting campaign he was on a few months ago, I think Tim has crossed the line here, from vague and abstract promises government savings to brutal facts that voters can see will impact their own, and other people's, lives. 

All successful technologies encourage procrastination.

This is most obvious with recent communications technologies like mobile phones, texting, social networking and the like.   In the dark ages of land lines and pay phones, a meeting with friends required advanced planning of details - where and when - down to the minute and the exact location. "I'll meet you at SAM's at 7. I'll be in the Eastern European Folk section on the third floor", and the like. Late changes to plans were a major risk. "Sorry, I got distracted by some box-sets of Gregorian chants on the second floor and lost track of time." Misunderstandings of the plan just as much. I once waited for my girlfriend for 45 minutes, at one coffee shop, while she waited at the one kitty corner to it.

Such awkward situations rarely occur today. All the details of the rendezvous can safely be worked out, or changed, at the last minute via GPS tracking, texts, or even a phone call (if they are complicated).  Prior to the last minute, general plans suffice. "I'll be finished work around 6. I'll give you a call and we can meet somewhere on King St."

This is often captured under the general virtue of convenience, but it is more exactly procrastination. We are able to put off the thinking, planning and commitment until we absolutely have to do it. As a result, we avoid most of it.  The cost of arranging the activity is greatly reduced, and as a result we can, and do, take a more careless and opportunistic approach to it.

But mobile communication technologies aren't the only procrastination enabling innovations. Cars are another, much older one. The most romanticized feature of driving your own car is the ability to just jump in a go at to any place, to any time. Contrasted with mass transit systems (trains, planes, buses), which have fixed schedules and routes that need to be planned around, the potential a for procrastination provided by a car is enormous.

But, of course, this isn't really true of all successful technologies. Some technologies are successful because they allow us to do things we previously could not do at all.  Water filled clay pots over a fire allowed us to boil cereals into porridge for the first time. Making porridge quickly and without planning would need to wait for Quick Oats and the microwave oven. Other technologies allow us to gain knowledge we just couldn't get before, as medical technologies allow us to determine the seriousness of an illness.

But even with those exceptions, I'm claiming that this is a useful guide for creating or identifying technologies that will succeed. If it allows for more procrastination it is likely a winner.