Are We Losing The Techno-war?
A hundred years ago life was simple. We lived in basic wooden houses with a few machines to crank or push stuff to do our chores. We rode a horse or buggy or walked to work or the store. Entertainment was reading a book
Our great grandfathers didn’t have to call tech support in India to take care of a problem. They could re-shoe the horse or repair the wagon themselves. Or someone nearby could do it for them. There weren’t instruction manuals in six languages the size of small books. The learning curve didn’t take years, as new products were introduced. They didn’t have to toss the old stove because a new pot couldn’t cook on the old one, in contrast to computer programs that may require increased memory or new operating systems. Today, the frustration is unending.
With technology running every aspect of our lives, it begins the second we wake up. The digital alarm clock that’s synched to the national atomic clock hopefully will go off. The electric toothbrush and shaver should run fine. The coffeemaker and microwave are usually reliable. The HDTV plasma 15” television on the counter seems okay, for now. As you sip your coffee, you check your Email after dumping your Spam and read the Google news feed. How’s the download speed? Your cell rings, but it’s an annoying sales call. About the same time, the fax spits out another ad for insurance. Ignoring the aggravation, you head for work with the Bluetooth clipped to your ear. Your GPS guides you to a new location where you have a meeting. Is the voice loud enough and the maps readable? If they fail, do you have a paper map back-up?
At the meeting, you use a digital recorder to make notes and run a Power-Point presentation off your laptop. Does the projector work well? How about the Wi-Fi connection? Are you prepared for any glitches? You figure that if all goes well with so much at stake, it will be a miracle. Today you dodged a bullet and heave a sigh of relief. But there’s always tomorrow. With so many digital bits and bytes and electronic gizmos, there is bound to be something that breaks down in the near future. Will it be the car, the computer or any other plug-in or battery-operated item? How long will it be broken and how expensive will it be to fix? Most of us are not able to repair the new technology.
So we hope for the best every day. But you can be sure that disaster is just around the corner. And, unless we are willing to give up our media players or cell phones, it’s only going to get worse. Now I can imagine that my Grandfather is laughing somewhere in heaven, thinking about that simple icebox we call a refrigerator. The only thing he ever had to do was buy a block of ice. Now that’s a really cool idea.
Jeffrey Hauser was a sales consultant for the Bell System Yellow Pages for nearly 25 years.
He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Advertising and has a Master’s Degree in teaching. He had his own advertising agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and ran a consulting and design firm, ABC Advertising. He authored a book about his directory years, “Inside the Yellow Pages” which can be seen at his website, http://www.poweradbook.com and he is currently the Marketing Director for http://www.thenurseschoice.com, a Health Information site and http://www.menuelephant.com which posts restaurant menus on the “site you’ll never forget.”
Tags: computers, hauser, losing, technology, war