The last two nights, sometime in the middle of the night, Microsoft automatically updated my development computer and restarted it. The result of this was a much more secure computer (I’m sure) which no longer works. Something about the update has destroyed key development tools installed on my system. I finally got the system fixed yesterday by restoring the state of the computer using System Restore.  I then had to reinstall some software, and voila, 4 hours later I was back in business. Imagine my dismay when I awoke to find that my system had again been updated automatically and equally as automatically destroyed.

I know the blame lies with the terrorists, but, here are some things I think Microsoft could do better:

• If I set my auto-update option to NOT install updates automatically, DON’T auto install anything
• If I set my auto-update option to NOT install updates automatically, DON’T auto install anything

If Microsoft would follow these two suggestions, they could at least make this customer happy. Even if they followed only one of the above, I would be happy. For now I’ll wait for System Restore to complete and hope that more diabolical schemes are not unleashed on my computer tonight while I am sleeping.

While I wait, I’ll take the opportunity to talk about “smart” systems. At least in the US, we seem to be enamored with the automatic. The “smarter” the system is, and by smarter I mean the more it can make decisions about what you as the master of the system would like accomplished, the better we deem the system to be. The plight I am currently in is an example of this sort of “smart” computing. The smart system thinks to itself, “The security patch is critical, therefore the master (me) would obviously want me to install it, therefore I will install it. Oh, the update wants to restart the computer, but master is still not here, I’m sure he’d want me to do it. Oh, master left some programs open and they won’t shut down automatically, but I need to shut down, I guess I better force quite them. Won’t master be proud of me.”

It all reminds me of the recent 30 Rock episode when Kenneth has to do double duty as Jack Donaghy’s assistant. Kenneth, however, has no idea how to determine what will be important to Mr. Donaghy and what will not. As a result, he constantly interrupts Jack and causes problems. In the end, Jack relieves him of his duties as assistant.

In my opinion, most smart computing (even the really smart stuff by Apple) tends to fall short just like poor Kenneth. If humans, who are much better at anticipating the desires and reading the intentions of other humans, have a hard time being “smart” servants of one another, why would we expect computers to do better? And, it seems, that the smarter we try to make the systems the more trouble they tend to cause. I think we ought to let the smart computing dream go (at least for now) and leave the important decisions to the ones who will have to clean up the mess (you and me).