It’s stating the obvious to say that just about everything we do is reliant in some way upon computers. Speaking personally. Without efficient-running computer systems, my life falls apart. Almost all my written communication is via email, my phone calls are generally made via Skype (via computer), and I am constantly sending and receiving music projects and files via FTP.  And, of course, my studio is entirely computer-based. Such things have become vital in the general everyday running of our lives and, as such, it’s easy to take them for granted in the same way as other fundamentals, like food and air. The ability, for example, to work on The Pacmen album with my good friend Alex whilst he is in LA and I am in the UK is something I don’t give a second thought.

Yes, computers are amazing. They make everything in life faster and less complicated. Until they go wrong. In fairness, nothing was wrong with my computers. All I planned to do was install brand new hard drives and update the operating system. It’s something I’ve been putting off for a long time, mainly because I was afraid that updating might cause issues with some of the old-but-essential third party software and hardware devices I use in sound creation.

The general consensus from friends who run studios was that I was worrying over nothing. ‘Leave your drives to clone overnight, install the new drives in the morning, and you should be up and running normally by lunchtime. You may have to update the odd device and re-register some plug-ins, but it won’t be an issue.’

With major reservations, I started on the long-overdue update. The good news is the drive cloning went according to plan.  I cautiously booted up the system, hoping that all the installed software and plug-ins would prove equally co-operative. What was I thinking? Virtually nothing worked. There followed over two weeks of reinstallation of just about every piece of software I own: countless emails to companies asking for new licenses for my new system registration, updates of primary software that wouldn’t allow you to access the huge sample libraries that were associated with the original version; lots of money spent re-purchasing identical ‘updated’ libraries and installing Terabytes of data.

I remember ‘update’ meant a revised version of something you already had. I mean, it’s crazy to think that a professional purchasing the latest version of a piece of software is unlikely not to have owned an older version of that software, or that they won’t have already created numerous projects that they will wish to open after their system has been updated. Sadly, ‘update’ increasingly seems to mean ‘new’ with a complete abandonment of the concept of backward compatibility.

I guess it’s indicative of the times. As a species, we seem to have abandoned all sense of history and its relevance to our present. Well, as Heine said, those who know nothing of history are destined to repeat it. Though you’d have to make sure you had the latest version of the relevant software installed on your system in order to read the article…