Why the scan seems sensible

I'm not going to pretend the scan is a defect. If it were, you'd have dropped it years ago, and you haven't because it earns its keep. Before I say anything against it, it's worth being honest about what it does for you.

It catches real faults. The total on page four really was wrong, and if it had gone to the board like that, your colleague would have been in trouble. The two crosses on the homework are two things your daughter doesn't understand yet. The pan will be harder to clean tomorrow. The scan isn't inventing problems. It's finding them, and finding them early is worth something.

It's what standards feel like from the inside. You care how things are done. A wrong total bothers you in a way it doesn't bother some people, and the bother is the standard doing its job. If you stopped noticing, you'd worry you'd stopped caring, and a person who doesn't care how the report reads is worse company than one who does.

It feels like realism. The world is full of things that are slightly wrong, and someone has to see them. The people who go about saying everything's lovely strike you as either not looking or not honest, and you'd rather be the one who looked.

It feels like somebody has to. In a household or a team, there's often one person who holds the list of what needs doing, and it's usually the one who sees what's wrong. If you stopped, who would notice the pan? You suspect the answer is nobody, and the house would fill up with pans.

It's how you were raised, for many readers. There was a parent, or a teacher, whose attention worked this way, and you learned that this is what a serious adult looks like. Praise was rare and meant something. Remarks on faults were the ordinary weather. You turned out capable, and you credit the weather.

And it feels like care. You wouldn't bother pointing out the wrong total to someone whose work you didn't take seriously. The scan is, in its way, a compliment. You hold people to the standard because you think they can meet it.

All of that is true, or true enough. What I want to show you is that the scan does all of this while keeping a record that's wrong, and that the people around you are living inside the record and not inside your intentions. That's the next four chapters.