I would say technology is highly overrated and light-years away from what it should be. Why should I be satisfied with using an array of buttons rigidly incorporated in my gadget so that I can type, character by character in 100% correct syntax whatever it is I want it to do? It should know what to do if it was mine. It should know if I gave it to somebody else and what that person wants, and then report back to me.
It should know if I was throwing it away, loosing it or storing it or letting my kids play with it or if I borrowed it to my mother and it should know what I didn’t want my mother to do with it also. The last one is important.
Technology should be able to visualize or play any file, not just identifying the extension and telling you that you must do so and so and that you must accept terms and conditions that don’t exist. It already knows what needs to be done and its telling you! It’s an outrage and I won’t have it.
If this quiet acceptance of our technology telling us what to do gets out hand we might find ourselves in a machine-organized system of human exploitation where we are programmed to believe that everything is ok. If we give them one finger they will try and get the whole hand. Let’s give them our middle finger and say no way!
The machines might get hostile and try to kill us all if we don’t write strict and tidy code. They might even be capable of traveling back in time and prevent us from stopping them if we wait any longer. This must end before it’s too late. And I know I undermine my favorite quote by saying so. For those who haven’t had the opportunity to read the comics or watch the movie The Watchmen it’s not too late. The quote is: It’s too late, it is always too late, it always has been too late and it always will be too late. (Dr. Manhattan)
Actually I am very disappointed in this so called future. I think we are there now, in the future. Our vision was to wear metal-like shiny comfortable clothes, spacesuits, outfits with utility-belts, have neutral and self-maintained hairdos and work with code and technology in a full-scale lab environment. We thought we would be flying to work in our supersonic transport vehicle or even teleporting but look at us. We still drive around in metalboxes that pollutes the air we need on roads filled with other people in metalboxes driving up to 100 times our natural speed risking violent death and mutilating accidents.
Still there are only jeans as an option to a suit. None of them is fitting me or the purpose. There is of course the ‘onepiece’ witch not only seems very comfy but also looks great. It is the only clothing I have considered buying from mailorder besides women’s clothes, but I have been told by everybody I have asked that it would not be social acceptable to wear at work, the onepice that is, I would never wear women’s clothes at work.
And the help functions, F1s and wizards of the programs we have written and devices we have invented so far are an insult to everybody on this planet. Not to talk about the warnings, the OK or Canceling of everything and the looping self-help programs. Who made those? I need to ask. I want to know their names and where they live, what their pets name are and where their kids go to school. I put an end to this menace once and for all with an offer they will not refuse, if they call the bluff they still would stop doing that when I’m done.
Making bad products even worse by confusing the owner with an incomplete fictional instruction manual of a product that might resembles yours and over the first 20 pages in at least 4 languages with illustrations warns about putting your fingers in an electric socket or letting infants put plastic bags over their head in such a manner that the infant chokes. No index. How dare they?
Declaring no responsibility if the world ends or if you use your product outdoors. Telephone numbers including prefix suffix and optional numbers in parenthesis, the visit address, the email address the postage address and the street address to all the helpdesk offices in the world that supports the usage of this product. North-Africa, Middle-East and Europe often have a shared helpdesk it seems.
Who do they think they are fooling?
Have you ever tried to call a company? Any company. The automated menu system where a voice give you an infinite number of choices if you try to make the ones that suits the most what you are calling for by pressing different buttons that somehow relate to choices you would make. And the first choices are usually if you want to buy products in different product groups. Is anybody doing that? Calling them to buy stuff? Again with the looping. You can spend an entire day trying to get through if you don’t let it go and give up or get pulled out of the situation by colleagues.
I will continue to be grumpy about this until it is fixed, and no, I will never fix your printer or install your wireless network if you ask me. If it comes to the point that I am in your house I will ask you if it’s ok that I fix the network and advise you to throw away the printer. I hate them. Who needs a printout anyway unless its airline tickets for your mum and dad. Yes, I have told them they got the tickets ‘in the bankcard’ and that people will know this even if they lose the card.
My mother (and dad) would be the only exception when it comes to first line tech support, but I not very good at it. Jesus. If they only could stop reading from error messages and dialog boxes in stuttering English even if I say repeatedly that I know what the problem is, but no, all of it. It could important so she has even written it down on paper and is now reading it to me on the phone. I am busy! How many times do I have to explain that they don’t have to buy Java to use net bank services? The machine being crazy is not the correct term for accidentally moving an email from the inbox and not something that should trigger a visit. Well they are getting much better and are managing by themselves now. There haven’t been any requests for a long time, so I assume they are.
I got a lot more to say about this and I am not finished yet. I let it slide max one more release from a major operating system but that’s it. If my terms are not met I’ll make another post that’s twice as tempered and include explicit words and descriptions. I will not shut up. You are hereby warned and invited to the blog I intend to set up at wrongplanet.net
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Les Rude
Last edited by LeeRude on 06 Jul 2012, 2:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
05 Jul 2012, 5:21 am
