The human cost of what I help perpetrate
Feb. 27th, 2006 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eyelessgameSo it's not as though I work in the pollution industry, or the cancer industry, or the war industry. And I'm at least a couple of steps removed from the Grand Theft Columbine industry. This isn't remotely comparable to the experience of a tobacco company low-level executive watching his mother die of lung cancer, or a bomb manufacturer having to visit a bombed-out ruin with dying children.
Still. There is a human cost to what I do, and I encountered a bit of it today.
Robert received a 'Star Wars: The Lego Video Game' DVD from his uncle Will for his birthday; it is the sole video game he'd ever asked for, and had been waiting for months to own it. From the time he opened the present he started asking, desperately but patiently, for my help installing it. Because I had other commitments Sunday afternoon, I wasn't able to get to it until the evening, so I put him to bed promising that I'd install it on my work PC (the only one with the required OS -- Windows XP) that night. He went to sleep, disappointed that he hadn't been able to play it yet but ready to get up early and play before school.
I finished the installation and left the icon on the desktop, ready to play, as promised.
Robert got up early this morning while I was getting Kate ready for her Monday morning bus stop. He quickly ate breakfast and brushed his teeth, found the game ready to play, scanned the instructions -- noticed the Nvidia logo on the instructions and commented on it, which made me kind of proud, momentarily -- then asked for permission (again) and assured me he'd quit with alacrity when it was time to go to school. Then, with great anticipation, he clicked on it to begin.
"Sorry, you need a graphics card with PixelShader 1.1!"
"Huh?" he asked, piteously.
Sure enough, in tiny print at the bottom, the box says "Graphics Requirements: 100% DirectX 9 compatible 32 meg Direct3D Card with Pixel Shader Support". My work computer was put together in 2002 and has something like an Nv4 or Nv11 -- certainly nothing so modern as our DX9 line.
"What's wrong?" he asked, with some alarm.
I explained as best I could.
"But..."
He spent about ten minutes staring at the packaging, then flipping through the game rules, controlling his urge for an emotional outburst.
He finally came up to me. "Can you get a better graphics card?"
Yes, I can. I will.
"Can you... get it today?" No insistence, just resignation and quiet disappointment.
There is planned obsolescence built into many professions. Few are as cruel to children.
There is a human cost to what I do.
Still. There is a human cost to what I do, and I encountered a bit of it today.
Robert received a 'Star Wars: The Lego Video Game' DVD from his uncle Will for his birthday; it is the sole video game he'd ever asked for, and had been waiting for months to own it. From the time he opened the present he started asking, desperately but patiently, for my help installing it. Because I had other commitments Sunday afternoon, I wasn't able to get to it until the evening, so I put him to bed promising that I'd install it on my work PC (the only one with the required OS -- Windows XP) that night. He went to sleep, disappointed that he hadn't been able to play it yet but ready to get up early and play before school.
I finished the installation and left the icon on the desktop, ready to play, as promised.
Robert got up early this morning while I was getting Kate ready for her Monday morning bus stop. He quickly ate breakfast and brushed his teeth, found the game ready to play, scanned the instructions -- noticed the Nvidia logo on the instructions and commented on it, which made me kind of proud, momentarily -- then asked for permission (again) and assured me he'd quit with alacrity when it was time to go to school. Then, with great anticipation, he clicked on it to begin.
"Sorry, you need a graphics card with PixelShader 1.1!"
"Huh?" he asked, piteously.
Sure enough, in tiny print at the bottom, the box says "Graphics Requirements: 100% DirectX 9 compatible 32 meg Direct3D Card with Pixel Shader Support". My work computer was put together in 2002 and has something like an Nv4 or Nv11 -- certainly nothing so modern as our DX9 line.
"What's wrong?" he asked, with some alarm.
I explained as best I could.
"But..."
He spent about ten minutes staring at the packaging, then flipping through the game rules, controlling his urge for an emotional outburst.
He finally came up to me. "Can you get a better graphics card?"
Yes, I can. I will.
"Can you... get it today?" No insistence, just resignation and quiet disappointment.
There is planned obsolescence built into many professions. Few are as cruel to children.
There is a human cost to what I do.
