I’ve worked in IT for a very long time. “Spiraling Death Syndrome,” or SDS, was a problem that occurred to some dial-up modems whereby they would reduce the connection speed in order to accommodate issues on the telephone line, but not recover. That is, the device would connect your computer to the Internet successfully, and full speed initially, but as you used your connection, it would progressively become slower and slower until it was unusable. Technically, this sort of technology still exists to this day, but because connections are so bleeding fast, and so much more reliable, no one ever really notices.

It’s simple. The device connects and starts pushing data through the pipe as fast as it is able to. Occasionally, something disrupts the flow of data, so the device slows itself temporarily until the disruption has passed. Disruptions in the connection are generally short lived, so this is all status quo. Once the disruption has passed, the device picks up the speed again, returning to its top speed after that. With SDS, just one part of that process fails: the device never picks back up. It drops its speed for the first disruption, and then again at the next disruption, over and over until it is operating at the slowest possible speed, which is very, very slow. I believe they would go down to about 300 baud, or 300 bits per second. This translates, roughly, to about 30 bytes per second, or to use modern equivalent terms, 0.03 Kbps or 0.00003 Mbps. Considering my current connection was just measured at 7 Mbps, that is very, very slow indeed.

Technical side note: Briefly, “bps” is “bytes per second” and “bips” or “baud” is “bits per second.” The standard for connections and throughput is to use bits per second, while for storage it is bytes or bytes per second as appropriate. Unfortunately, like so many things in our world, these details have often been lost to obscurity, and so most modern speed tests will give results in bits per second, but present the units “bps,” which just confuses everyone. It’s like how a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes and not 1000 bytes, but again it depends on who you ask.

So why bring up this old, outdated term or problem? Well, it is not only digital connections that suffer from this problem. In my life currently, I am observing this effect occurring in many other places. In particular, if a person is trying to go about living their life without disruption, we might suggest they are operating at something like 100% of their capabilities. Something like top speed. But if something happens to them, disrupted by some outside influence or event, they will be forced to slow to accommodate the event. Their efficiency will drop below that 100% as they now have to deal with the disruption. Think about working your job and a co-worker comes along and wants to ask you a question. You were working hard, but now you need to practically stop in order to answer their question. You slow, briefly, to deal with the disruption, and then hopefully are able to get back to work once they leave, having had their question answered appropriately.

Thus, I am suggesting people go through a similar process. They do what they do, pursuing their projects as quickly as makes sense for them, and will periodically be disrupted during the course of their pursuit. And I think for most people, once those disruptions have passed, they will eventually return to their pursuit, operating as quickly as they did initially if they are lucky.

The clear issue one might immediately think about is how one deals with many more than one disruption. If one is disrupted and unable to recover from the disruption, then they may be forced to slow even more for the next disruption. And if there are many, many disruptions, then they may be stalled entirely until all disruptions are resolved. This is the sort of thing that happens to me in IT occasionally, where I come into work and never get any progress on any of my projects because there are “fires to put out,” to use the colloquial term that we often use. My entire day is simply dealing with disruptions, and so I get no work done on my main projects.

This is the nature of the situation I find myself in at present. For the past several months, I have been mostly unable to work on any of my own personal projects, as I have been inundated with disruption after disruption. In my personal life, I have been unable to recover because of the sheer magnitude of those disruptions. I will not go into detail, as I would like to avoid giving too much of my personal life information here, but I will say that each and every appliance in my home has required some sort of work or effort put into it (some a significant amount), and many other attempts at regular activity have been thwarted by the resurgence of the pandemic.

Technical side note: the pandemic has not ended. Contrary to how the people around me are behaving, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be an issue, with newer variants being discovered all the time. In fact, my partner and I received our most recent vaccinations just last week. And I am continuing to isolate at home, not going out nearly as much as I might like.

It does not really matter the precise reason for what is happening to me. The details are less important. What is important is that I am unable to refocus on my own personal projects at this time. As much as I want to do certain things, pursuing education and changing careers being rather high on my list, I am unable to really pursue them presently because I am inundated with countless other tasks and chores that require my attention.

For those who actually know me, I admit I am lying a little bit here. That is, I am about to engage in a pursuit of education despite the fact I ought not. I will be abandoning my partner in her time of need in order to take a class that I signed up for several months ago. It was not an inexpensive class either, and canceling my enrollment is not really a reasonable option. And so, I continue to prepare to go to this class, despite the fact I ought to be spending more time dealing with things at home.

So in truth, it is not I who has been inflicted with SDS at all. It is my partner. And that is the crux of my issue right now. She has been dealing with the brunt of all of this disruption, and she is the one who has been unable to recover. Every time she tries to pursue a project of her’s, she is the one who is thwarted. And she is the one who has pretty well ceased functioning at this point.

I don’t know why, or how, I am able to keep going right now. But I think it is because of her. It is that old passage from Aristotle that I continue to be unable to locate that I think describes the situation best. From his Politics, Book One, Part VII, translated into English: “…those who are in a position which places them above toil have stewards who attend to their households while they occupy themselves with philosophy or with politics…“

In other words, what he clearly believed was that, in order for some of us to do the things we want to do, others have to do the things we do not want to do. This is a reference to masters and slaves. The masters can only do the sorts of things masters do, such as pursuing philosophy, because the slaves are attending to the things they do not wish to do, such as cooking and cleaning. This is the description of wives to their husbands. And of most blue collar laborers to the owners of the companies they work for. Of the privileged and the oppressed.

Again, I will not dwell on the particulars of why our world has become as it has. But it has changed. And the progress that had been made over the past several decades, trying to give voices to those who did not have voices, is being eroded. Those who previously had choices are now finding those choices have disappeared. There are very few options remaining, and people are being forced to make do with things they never wanted to make do with.

Looking back at what I’ve written, it is clear to me that without those personal details to support my arguments, it sounds more like the ramblings of a mad man. And I am mad. And I am privileged. To be able to write all of this in the first place. To be able to take my class. To be able to continue as I have, despite those around me being unable to do so.

I think what I want most right now is to apologize to those who are not as privileged as I am. To apologize to those whose shoulders I am standing on, even now. I have tried as hard as I could to make her projects a priority. I’ve tried to leverage my privilege to her advantage. But it isn’t working any more. Maybe it never did. Maybe I’m about as useless as it appears.