There is a fairly famous economic law out there–some guy has it named after him even, that says that technological advances will make the production of materials more efficient and less expensive. I have been searching for over an hour to find the exact wording and name of the law even though it only has a passing relationship to this entry and I CAN’T FIND IT!! So anyone who know, please tell me.
(Took me two years, but I found the answer-Baumol’s Cost Disease)
Anyhow, this mysterious law has often been invoked when it comes to explaining why doing live performance is so expensive. While other sectors become more efficient, live performances are produced much as they were after the Restoration of the Charles II. We pay the increasing cost of using outdated, inefficient methods. Set construction hasn’t started to employ any new revolutionary materials, costumes are still made by hand, performers still need about the same amount of rehearsal time before the product is finished.
Sure nail guns, power saws and sewing machines have made things faster. However, except for recent advances in moving lights which allow you to use fewer instruments to create the same effect (though they cost more than the old ones) live performance is lagging behind in the efficiency department. (Actual the digitization of sound has really been a boon. Not only can it be stored easy, but laptop computers can replace 20 foot long sound boards)
I mention all this to give a respectful nod to the old inefficient methods. The past week has not been good technologically for me. Our computerized ticketing system stopped printing tickets and no one has been able to revived it. Loading the software on a new computer and borrowing a printer from another theatre hasn’t solved the problem either. It doesn’t help that the ticketing software company has gone out of business. So for show this week and the one coming up in a month, we will have to have printed hard tickets.
The brakes went out on the cargo van we intended for luggage transport duty while I was on the way to the airport. Fortunately no one was hurt (and fortunately they didn’t go out while my assistant was following my new car!) Granted this is more a matter of technology getting old than being new but it added to my frustration.
For the last few weeks we have been having trouble with our dimmer racks (they control theatre lights). The lighting system is about 2 years old so it is as state of the art as any equipment with a computer in it can be. Being computerized, it is very flexible and able to give feedback about operations.
Including about things that aren’t happening.
These “smart” dimmers have decided they are overheating and turn themselves off. However, the air in the dimmer room is 72 F and the insides have been vacuumed so often to remove any offending dust, the equipment vendor has commended us on how clean the racks are.
The reason they go out is a mystery so we often wire around that quadrant for shows so they don’t go out in the middle of a performance. The whole episode has made the technical director nostalgic for the old Strand dimmers which would chug along ignoring anything short of a direct hit by artillery.
The worst part is, attempts to tell the computers in the dimmers they aren’t “smart” and can’t decide if they are overheating hasn’t been successful. They still think they can and will shut down. (Even worse, they are so smart, the error code they give with the overheating isn’t in any of the troubleshooting manuals.)
I am sure many people have similar stories about their encounters with technology where the “improvement” gives you more worries than the trouble it is supposed to be alleviating. For example, in newer cars, if you don’t close your gas cap tightly enough, the “check engine” light comes on–and won’t go out for 48 hours after you tighten it. Makes you wonder why there isn’t a “tighten your gas cap” light and a reset switch for it.