I don’t think I’m becoming an anti-technology, cruddy old man because the world is leaving me behind as it goes faster and faster and is designed for much younger people. I expect things to work, and as I have been wrapped up in some severe trouble lately, dealing with bone-crushing topics, at the end of the day, I hope the television at least works. However, the TV in our bedroom is supposed to be a high-tech, smart TV that is very sophisticated. However, it makes me mad all the time because it is completely wireless, and when my wife walks into the room, she always scrambles the signal. It’s a long story, but my wife has unusual electromagnetic imprints on the world. It’s always been a problem, but back in the old days, these televisions were hard-wired into the wall. But not anymore. These days, everything is wireless, and I’ve found that none of it works as well as the old stuff, which is getting on my nerves. The other day, I was enjoying a show when my wife came into the room. The TV lost its signal and showed a spinning death icon, saying, “Please wait.” Then, after a few minutes, it simply stopped and informed me that “it couldn’t process the request at this time.” I was so mad that I just about threw the whole thing through the nearby window and out into the front yard. I didn’t “request” anything. I commanded the television to show me a channel, and it was failing to perform its basic task. And who did that stupid television think it was? But what was worse was the message code that framed the operation of the television as a “request,” as if the TV had an option to choose to do what I asked of it. And that’s part of a much larger problem that I am seeing across all of society, and it’s a significant one.
People were taken advantage of by technology as tech bros tried to capture market share with control mechanisms that suited their needs. The quest to make things easier has only given us things that are too intrusive into our lives, as they are constantly collecting information on us, which can be irritating. However, the technology never really works, and the by-product of the effort probably should never have been utilized to begin with. However, we are people who like to put our generational stamp on things, and technology is a means of making a new generation feel better about themselves by gaining market dominance over the previous one. But at a certain point, coffee is coffee, a phone is a phone, and an elevator does one primary thing. You might add some fancy buttons that display different colors, but you don’t change their function. However, in the world of business, we have transitioned from note-taking to computer processing. When systems fail, instead of completing tasks the old-fashioned way, as we have in the past, we have become a culture that accepts failure and waits patiently for resolution. When you are talking to other businesses out there and trying to process a PO, or manage inventory, or send supporting paperwork with a shipment, most of the time there is a system failure in the chain and the people involved are waiting for IT to resolve it so that the world can resume its business. This arrangement has simply not been working. We tried to make it all easier, but it’s ended up being much less effective.
There are some large companies that I am aware of, which are attempting to move away from their computerized management systems and return to taking notes on paper. The paper notes don’t give you failure messages like my TV, which assumes that the technology has an option to perform or not. If we are going to have technology in our lives, we need to let it know who’s boss. And that when we tell it to do something, it does it, and does it quickly. All this week, I had heard countless examples of ERP systems that were down, and people were waiting for them to come back up so that parts could be shipped. The kind of geeks who work in IT are about as out of touch as human beings on earth could be. They would take things more seriously if they were playing the game Fortnite. However, real-life things are much less interesting to them. They are the kind of people who sit at a table of 12 but prefer to interact with a computer screen rather than with real people. And those same personality types are what programming these cause codes in these TVs think are appropriate answers. I used language a few times this week to them while on the phone with them that I did with that stupid television, and you would have thought I ran over their dog. They are such pasty people, way too sheltered from reality, and they are in charge of how this technology forms in our society, even down to our TVs. To me, if the technology doesn’t perform, get rid of it and get something else. And you could tell that the young people were using technology to hide in the world and to conceal their poor performance behind it. And it ticked me off.
I’m not against technology. If something is invented that’s better, great. However, if it’s not improving our lives, or we’re trying to accommodate technology when we should reject it, as in the case of smart TVs that aren’t so smart, we should discard them. Because what I see happening is that technology has been used to hide the bad performance of lazy losers who are trying to hide in the background. And it’s lowering the performance standards of our society as a whole. I attended a substantial event the other day that included valet parking. I didn’t feel like dealing with people, but the young fellows doing the valet parking were sharp and ambitious. And after seeing numerous technological failures throughout the week, it was refreshing to see the competence of ambitious young people trying to earn a few bucks. And after a hard day, you want to hear Yes, sir, and No, sir, and Here are your keys. You don’t want to hear from technology that it has lost your keys, requiring you to wait for it to process your request. Or anything that takes away the performance standard. It was raining outside, and those kids were working in it, not bumping cars into each other or making guests wait. They were running to get the cars so people wouldn’t have to wait. And it was good to see. Not the kind of service that computers are giving us these days. And perhaps we should reconsider many aspects of it. I gave the young men a twenty as a tip just because I appreciated the level of competency, and they were a little shocked. But they had no idea what kind of week I had just survived and how much technology had made it much more difficult, rather than easier. I was just happy to deal with hungry human beings who wanted to do a good job. When you need something done, it’s not a request; it’s a command, and we need to put an end to technology that isn’t respectful enough of our time, especially during our leisure time.
Rich Hoffman
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The Overmanwarrior 