Chapter 2. Acceleration

Using a computer requires a fair amount of ritual and ceremony. You have to boot it up, you have to know how to launch applications, and you must understand the interaction model, which can differ between applications. The less you interact with your computer, the faster you can go. In other words, eliminating ceremony allows you more time to get to the essence of the problem. Time you spend digging through a long filesystem hierarchy to find something is time you could be using to be more productive. Computers are tools, and the more time you spend on the care and feeding of the tool, the less work you get done. The science fiction author Douglas Adams had a great quote: “We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”