The Dichotomy of Technology Do you ever think back to something that happened say thirty or forty years ago, like that time you got really lost and thought, “Why didn’t I look up the directions on my phone?” And then thought, “Because we didn’t have those sorts of phones back then!”
As I write, I am sitting in a cell carrier’s store trying to resolve issues with a whole box full of devices. I have spent over twelve hours over the past three days working on these problems with the “help” of tech support via phone and chat, and looking up and following various troubleshooting articles online. Of course I am feeling very sorry for myself that I had to drive over here and spend the time sitting here just to get the devices to work correctly. At times like this I am prone to think things like, “They said technology would make everything easier but it is making everything more complicated and harder.”
In truth, technology has made many, many things much, much easier but it has also made at least pockets of life much more com-plicated and difficult. It depends on the hour and the day as to whether I would say the whether all the pluses and minuses equal a positive or negative net result.
If I am truthful and not feeling particularly gloomy, I have to admit that technology has made life much better and has enabled me to do all sorts of things I would never have been able to do without it. The other day I was telling my husband about the time I decided to visit Texas in 1980, bought an airplane ticket and made all my arrangements myself. As I was telling the story, I am pretty sure I was visualizing myself sitting in front of a computer making flight arrangements. Then he asked me how, exactly, I went about scheduling flights and purchasing a ticket “back in the old days.” I remember spending a lot of time on the real telephone with an airline agent and then having to drive to the ticket desk at the airport within twenty-four hours to actually purchase my tickets—paper tickets, mind you. I suppose I could have paid over the phone with a credit card, but that is another thing most people did not have back in those days.
Now with technology I can make an flight arrangements while laying flat on my back in a hospital, which I have done. I can tap my phone on a gas pump to fill up my car. I can enjoy video calls with my grandchildren or with my cousins who live on the other side of the world. I can watch the Tennessee football game while walking out of a Texas A&M game, which I have done.
I reckon I have talked myself completely out of this bout of self-pity. It helps that this nice and very competent woman at the store is solving my problems one right after the other. If she can keep me from having any more tech support conversations at least for a month or two, the trip will have been worth it. Spring-CreekArtsGuild@gmail.com