Jul 29, 2020 8:00 AM

Why Do I Keep Refusing to Install OS Updates?

Our tech advice columnist is here to help.

a hand hits an update notification with a fly swatter.

SUPPORT REQUEST :

For longer than I care to admit, I have opted to delay updating my phone’s OS. This is a daily process in which I’m asked if I want to update now or later, and each day I choose “later,” fully aware that I have no intention of doing it later. I’ve never really been able to articulate to myself why I do this, beyond a vague sense that updates are pointless. Logically, I know the update would probably have new features I’d find useful, and I obviously can’t keep delaying forever. The reboot would be a minor inconvenience, but being prompted day after day is arguably a far greater nuisance. More concerning, there are times when I seem to get some weird pleasure out of refusing the update, though the reason behind this is similarly unclear. Can you help me understand what I’m missing?

Dear [ 508 ] ,

Humans, unlike machines, are inconsistent and fundamentally irrational creatures. Whereas operating systems ascend the scale of being with reliable improvement, gaining new features and capabilities with each new version; we falter, regress, and get ourselves into compulsive ruts we can neither justify nor explain. That’s not to say your decision to delay the updates is random or without purpose. Our actions, even when irrational, usually have some meaning attached to them. And if I understand your question correctly, what you’re looking for is not a solution to this cycle or an escape from it, but rather a way to see it as meaningful.

For starters, I can assure you that you’re not alone. Software updates are a modern locus of dread, one of those inconveniences that are dismissed as the price we pay for even greater convenience—though many people are, like you, uncertain of the trade-off. No amount of good behavior exempts one from this nuisance—nor, apparently, does money and fame. You may recall that this year’s most-discussed celebrity profile opened with the actor Robert Pattinson staring at his computer in a recognizable state of existential panic: What, why is everything updating, and how do you stop it updating? (The interviewer’s advice: “Never update!”)

I suspect that the tension you feel—the reason why this is a problem at all—stems from your belief that you should accept the update, that it is the rational thing, or perhaps even the right thing, to do. Updates are a digital form of hygiene, a concept that has been linked to holiness since the 17th century, and I imagine many well-meaning people have already informed you of the enhanced security measures they provide and warned of the bugs that will persist if you don’t keep up. These are indisputable truths; I will refrain from moralizing on them here.

I suspect, too, that you feel some shame about your failure to desire what is being freely offered. Technology has made our lives better in countless ways, and updates offer many additional improvements: new games; better maps; fresh wallpapers, fonts, and emojis. To refuse this bounty feels like ingratitude, and is, moreover, entirely futile. Scorning the latest technologies is about as productive as throwing stones at an oncoming train—the train being, of course, the future, which is hurtling toward us full bore, whether we like it or not. On the other hand, it’s not like accepting an update will put an end to them. There are always more—if not for your phone, then your computer, your watch, your thermostat, your doorbell—and their frequency has accelerated in recent years. How do you stop it updating? The short answer is, you can’t: Innovation is a cycle for which there is no foreseeable end.

Perhaps this can explain your feeling that updates are “pointless.” In fact, I sense a historical dimension to your anxiety, one that raises a much larger question about the point of technological advancement itself. For what it’s worth, the notion that progress is limitless and can continue indefinitely has been with us for only a few hundred years. Before that, history was presumed to be going somewhere, toward some final destination. The medieval layperson believed that history would culminate in the Kingdom of God. The 18th century philosopher envisioned human reason as an ascending staircase that would one day lead to utopia. For us, progress is not a means toward some final state—a terminal update—but an end unto itself. The stairs continue indefinitely and are forever disappearing into clouds.

This modern view, for all its optimism, is not without its problems: any journey without a destination makes the notion of progress incoherent. In his 1937 book Ideology and Utopia, the German sociologist Karl Mannheim feared that the loss of faith in a moment of historical completion would “leave the world without meaning of life,” and would make progress itself seem “prosaic.”

There are moments of technological achievement that manage to shock us out of this malaise: the moon landing or, more recently, the holy awe that filled the hotel conference room in Seoul when a computer program beat the world champion in Go. But the promises of OS updates—revamped mail toolbars, Bubble updates, dozens of new Memoji stickers—fail to inspire the same faith in the human endeavor. If these updates arouse angst in so many of us, perhaps it’s because their incremental nature reveals the endlessness of this cycle, in which novelty often seems to be serving no greater end than novelty itself.

There exists, in fact, a widespread suspicion that OS updates are a form of planned obsolescence—that companies design new software solely for the sake of crippling older devices and increasing sales (a notion that surfaces each year when “iPhone slow” Google searches spike alongside new iPhone releases). This is a conspiracy theory, though it’s one that contains a distorted truth. Even the average user understands that software updates have as much to do with concrete problems—coding errors, security fixes—as they do the constant pressure on companies to sustain buzz, maintain customer mindshare, and justify the premium price of their products. Even if a company were to devise the ideal OS—the Promised Land that presumably lies at the end of all that California wilderness (10.10 Yosemite, 10.12 Sierra, 10.14 Mojave)—they would not simply pat their development teams on the back and dispatch them to the park for some leisure and fresh air.

What is it all for? And where is it all going? Each update prompt compels us to ask these questions, if only subconsciously, and the answer is never satisfying. Even the economic telos of free markets—the notion that innovation is spurred by the demands of consumers who have become accustomed to ever-increasing comforts and luxuries—begins to break down when technologies anticipate our needs before we are able to articulate them. It’s easy to feel in these moments that progress is less a staircase than an escalator that carries us along without our will or consent.

I imagine you know this already, and that it’s partly why you feel ambivalent each time the prompt appears. The peculiar menace of such prompts is that they present us with a false choice, the kind of bargain parents give to recalcitrant toddlers so as to flatter their sense of agency: We are not asked whether we desire the new software, only whether we will take it now or later. In fact, I should mention that your problem may soon enough take care of itself. Many of the new OS’s make updates mandatory—or “seamless”—meaning that they download automatically without the prompts. This will probably make your life itself more “seamless,” though it will also rob you of the pleasure of refusing.

As for the source of that pleasure: It could be that delaying the updates is an ascetic impulse. A world of ever-increasing comforts and commodities is wonderful, of course, and arguably more than we deserve; but it fails to demand much of us in return—no sacrifices, or acts of heroism, or exercises of the will. Perhaps you are spacing out your exposure to novelty so as to build character, or to increase your sense of wonder when you do finally accept. Or maybe, in refusing, you feel as though you’ve had a say in the trajectory of the future—that pressing “later” asserts a democratic will on questions that do not appear on any ballot.

At the end of the day, the root cause of your refusal is less important than your ability to see it as deliberate, so that it ceases to feel like one more automatic impulse. The machine’s prompting is mechanical. Your rejection of it makes you human. Once that’s cleared up, you should continue delaying the updates until you are no longer given a choice, so long as it imbues your life with a sense, however small, of meaning. This is one thing all the advances of technology cannot provide for us. We must find it where we can.

Faithfully yours,

Cloud

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