(This article, unlikely practically everything else I write, was not afforded a final edit. And I trust you’ll understand why. if it doesn’t make sense, this will simply go to paint the picture for you even better.)
Is all the technology worth it? I have my doubts.
First of all, let me state that I don’t think that any of the advances in technology in my lifetime have done a thing to make us better people. And while I wouldn’t expect that they would make us better people, what I’m wondering about is whether they’re actually hurting the quality of life, rather than improving it.
Don’t worry; this won’t be another article about the dangers of screen time and such—or about the social disconnect that so many attribute to our technology.
No, my gripe is about just how many times the technology doesn’t work! For whatever the reasons, I notice that I’m frequently aggravated and hampered—”triggered” even!—by “bugs” and other malfunctions in all the gadgets I own. Here’s a quick bullet list so that you know what I have in mind as I write:
- My computer’s slow. Is that because my router is down, or because my internet provider is down? Or is it because my machine is loaded with malware/spyware? Or does my machine need some other maintenance? Is this because of “planned obsolescence“?
- My smart phone is slow. Is this a problem with the mobile carrier? Is it a problem with malware/spyware? Does my phone need some other maintenance? Is this because of software bloat or bloatware? Planned obsolescence?
- Facebook isn’t working right. Is this simply the Facebook “bug” du jour? Is my Facebook mobile app outdated? Is this a problem with malware/spyware on my computer or phone? Is this a connectivity problem?
- My email wasn’t received. Is this because I’m being blocked by the masters of the email universe? Is this because of something I’ve done, or because of something one of the other bajillion users using my same email server has done? Is this a problem with the recipient’s email server, or his settings? If so, will the person even know how to discuss this intelligently with me? Or will they get “triggered” by the discussion, and have a meltdown?
- My Bluetooth devise isn’t connecting reliably to my computer/phone/tv. Why did it connect OK yesterday? Why does it seem to be connecting to more than one device at a time? Is the the transmission end that’s messed up, or the reception end?
- The MailChimp subscription I got shows no way to contact MailChimp. Am I not logged in right? Does this company really not want its paid customers to contact them? Where do I complain about the bad service I got?
- The MailChimp “onboarding” specialist was hard to understand on the phone. Was this because my brand new phone I just started using sucks? Or was this because her phone sucks? Or was this a one-time bad connection that will never happen again? is this because he’s talking to me on a cell phone? Or is it a VoIP connection (an internet call)? Or is it an internet call over a cell phone? Is it an internet call with a $5 headset?
Here’s how this kind of thing aggravates my life:
I’m doing computer work, and I’m already stressed because I also need to get on the treadmill and do a workout. But if I just finish this one task first, then I can get on the treadmill with a sense of accomplishment. But no, I’m just too stressed. So get on the treadmill now, then, dummy. No, not yet. I don’t want to. But you should. Of course I should, but I should also finish this. At what cost? Well, I haven’t had a stroke yet! Just do it now, and you can finish later. That sounds like what a lazy person says—an excuse-maker. Well, whatever, I’m on the treadmill now, so shut up. OK, shutting up.
Then I get on the treadmill and turn on the TV and the $24 DVD player that’s worth every bit of $3, being made of the finest Chinesium. And I put on my Bluetooth headphones and power them up. But then it takes 4 minutes to get the Bluetooth to connect between the TV and the headphones. (The anxiety from the computer chair has not released, but is now amplified, and time’s a-wastin’!) So I’ve been standing still for 4 minutes dealing with the Bluetooth, until finally it’s working.
Then, two minutes later, the Bluetooth headset signals that is battery is dying. Fine. I’ll use one of the $10 wireless earbud sets I have. But it won’t connect today. Maybe this other one will. No, that one’s battery’s dead. But this one, maybe. Yes, this one seems to work. 8 minutes and counting into my 40-minute walk time. Still no walking done, to speak of.
Then the DVD player stops intermittently, with some sort of hangup that leaves me wondering whether to throw it away, to reboot the machine and spend 3 minutes trying to make it back to the same spot in the video—and as I’m typing this just now, my computer starts responding slowly, and I finish a sentence and then watch the letters appear one by one, which they do often, particularly as I’m typing a blog post in the WordPress backend–but is this because my machine has malware/software issues? Or is this because of the WordPress server that my son James hosts for me on his computer? Or is it because of our local Internet Provider? Why don’t I just run SuperAntiSpywareFungusMaxKiller? Sure, why not do that, or should I close 87 tabs first. Wait, Firefox is not responding. Forget the tabs and just run the scan. Well, the scan is hanging. Nope, there it goes. Nope,it’s hung again. Maybe just reboot the machine. No, just be patient. Patience is good. Except when it doesn’t work. Yeah, there’s that.
So, now, don’t reboot the DVD player, because patience might be good and all, but I’m getting really triggered by all this. On, nice. My new phone just called my Cousin Chris for no reason. Just hang up. You can talk to Chris later—after your walk. Oh, look, it’s Chris calling. And now a text from him. “Did you just call?”
Wait, the phone just beeped with some notification I’ve never heard before. I know! I’ll just swipe down and look at the notifications screen James showed me. Except there’s nothing here that says “now” on it like it’s supposed to say when something beeps you. ….waiting for this sentence to finish printing to the screen. Wait, Kay needs me to close the door behind here–which I can do while this sentence I typed blind finish printing to the screen.
OK, where was I? Oh, I need to finish that poem I was working on—and start this new one I just thought of, before I forget it like that one I forgot yesterday. But the DVD is stuck, so why not just watch Netflix? Well, although my TV remote has a Netflix button on it, I don’t think it’s the right remote for this Vizio, but for the other one. OK, then. Let’s just swap out the TVs. I’ll put the newer TV on the shelf in front of the treadmill, and I’ll watch Netflix on that—especially since I finished watching all of my old discs for The Unit, and for all of 24 that I could find (though I’m missing at least two seasons of that).
But I got the TVs switched out and the feet keep falling off the bigger one, but I eventually get it up there. Then I discover that Netflix does work on that TV, but I have to log in. And it rejects my password. And is that because it’s not the right password, or because I typed it wrong? Or did I type it right, but the button clicks don’t always register on this older remote control. Let’s ask Kay what the right password is; she just mentioned it yesterday. She’ll know. Well, she says it’s what I thought it was. But is the first letter caplitalized or not? Well, I tried it either way, and neither worked. Maybe the email address that was already loaded into the Netflix app on that TV is the wrong one?
Tell you what, I’m extra anxious now. I’ll relieve the stress by going a tad early back up to the apartment for lunch. And while I’m there, I’ll open Netflix up there and double check what email account it uses, and get the password, too. Well, no—I want to use the emdash here, rather than the three normal dashes like this (—) because the emdash (—) looks classier. Problem is, though, that it doesn’t come standard in the WordPress editor, so i had to load a plugin that offers an emdash option, which I can access with, let’s see, one, two, three, four clicks of the mouse, which includes taking my right hand away from the home row. And that’s rather costly, so maybe —‘s not so bad in a post—especially one of this nature?
But the TV upstairs at lunch—it won’t show me my Netflix credentials unless I happen to be logged out of the machine—the X-box One, that is, which James bought ten years ago at the pawn shop down the road–and which sometimes won’t eject a disc on demand. So that’s no good. But lunch was, because I watched some of a Longmire episode during my stress-relieving lunch break. And back down to the treadmill, where I avoid sharing all this stress with Kay, who finds it stressful, too. But I tell her anyway, so she’ll know why I’m so on edge about everything.
And I make her supervise as i try yet again with the Netflix password, and somehow get it right this time. And now when I accidentally type a lower case, as in the last sentence, I see that the autocorrect feature’s not working, and there’s no squiggly line under it. And is that because there’s a but in WordPress now? Or did I accidentally click on a lower-case i somewhere and click on “add to dictionary” in the pop-up menu? Why would I do such a thing? Oh, and how do I get something out of my dictionary entries?
So Netflix is finally up and running. But then I go poking around and discover that this TV has no Bluetooth capabilities. No problem, though. I’ll just use the external Bluetooth transmitter I was using on the old TV—the transmitter that can take 3 or 4 minutes to connect properly, if it doesn’t connect right away. But alas! This TV has no 1/8″ headphone jack like the old one. So I can’t plug in.
Fine. I’ll just do today’s walk at the cemetery. No, it’s raining. Fine. I’ll just sick back down at the anxious computer and tough it out on those three Google Forms (that actually work pretty well, Thank you, Google!, though I do not like you because of your evil business practices and social agenda). So I get my forms done, and then I have to stop and write this short post—which I realize quickly may have at least some value as a real-life play-by-play account of the neurodiverse mind of Jack in action on a Saturday afternoon. Strike that; it’s 6:25 pm already, and time to go make dinner, and try to recover from the stress of the day—in front of the TV, where I can start pre-stressing for tomorrow and wondering just how often I’m going to get hung up in technological messes again tomorrow, and whether I’m going to get triggered over it emotionally and be in a terrible mood for a couple of hours.
And some of this is because I make mistakes. And some of it is because so many of these companies are—I believe the course term with the proper emotional impact is— “greedy bastards” who won’t think twice about putting a product on the market before it is ready for the consumer. (And the constant software revisions and updates create hundreds of new “bugs” to be discovered by people like me—or are they user errors? Or random particles ejected from solar flares, perhaps? Who can say?
But I frequently feel like a cow in the cattle chute down at the processing plant—just the next lucky customer in the game of “guess what we’ve got for you?” Just a worthless customers (whose money has already been spent, and we don’t care if he ever spends with us in the future since we’ve already data-mined him like crazy and leveraged his account like he would never believe if he knew the half of it.)
And you can ask my wife and son if this is not true: I’ve been thinking for weeks that maybe I should throw most of this stuff in the trash and go old school. Because I’m not sure it’s worth it. Sure, if it all worked, maybe. But that’s just the thing. The percentage of time when something’s going wrong with this, that, and the other thing seems remarkably high. And I”m not sure it’s worth it.
This not-so-hot new smart phone I got—Oh, hi, Chris!—I’m getting texting failures. Huh? How do texts fail? Well, turns out, it wants to send RCS messages, whatever that is, and uses good-ol’ reliable SMS only as a last resort—unless I just hit the arbitrary button and accident changed from rock-steady to roll-the-dice somehow.
And I’m not sure my life is any better for all this. And I wonder what I could do with a landline and a fax machine.
Anything you want me to say to Chris for you while I’ve got him?
