Discussion » Questions » Life and Society » Contrary to common belief, not everything associated with modern technology is automatically better than its predecessor.
Randy D

Contrary to common belief, not everything associated with modern technology is automatically better than its predecessor.


  When I listen to a radio and want to change stations, it’s simple: I reach over and change the station!  It takes two seconds. When I listen online, however, it’s go to the home button, select log on option, Touch ID here, open this, click here, minimize that, scroll, scroll, scroll, swipe right three times, select station, confirm that I want to leave the current station, close this, select again, decline the opinion poll, scroll again, tap twice, decline the pop-up ad, enter zip code, pretend to read the entire privacy agreement, accept privacy agreement, click this again . . . Grrrrrrrr.
  Okay, so I’m exaggerating.


What are some examples you can cite from personal experience of technology making something more complicated and/or more difficult as opposed to making it better?
~

  

Posted - July 17, 2020
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Responses


  • 6023
    Payroll - or any accounting, really.
    Without computers, we wouldn't have so many things to do or reports to run.
    Sure, they make the job easier than if we had to do it all by hand ... but they also made more work, because they made the existing work easier.
      July 17, 2020 9:09 AM MDT
    3

  • 10026
    Randy, your question brings a movie I just watched to mind. 
    Have you ever seen the "The Circle" with Tom Hanks?
    He plays a small roll but the movie is thought provoking.

    It is Amazing how much information/data is gathered about us and our lives and choices. 
    The minute we became reliant on our phones for more than a call is the minute we gave up our privacy and opened doors to marketing and being slaves to every manipulative scheme "they" have.
    Think of it this way.
    Every button you push opens the door to being part of a machine.  Your phone knows your voice, your face, your friend, your family, your pet's name, your car, etc. etc.
    You might want to take a peek at that movie.  I know I can relate.

    Yes. Having access to everything at any time and information on anyone at the push of a button has made things more complicating and bothersome.
    We now not only have a paper trail, we have a voice trail, a face trail and we have to keep many more instructions in our heads.
    Keeping it simple is out of the game book now.
    In making it simple, we have made it more complicated and more distant than actually the goal in the first place.
    Turning on the TV, for example.
    We have more remotes than 2 people should ever have in their possession.  We have 151 channels and a remote that says we have to pay and a code to open the box and movies I would never think of.
    We have more to look at on boxes that flash colors than we would ever need.
    They all come with instructions that say:  Push this button.
    And to think....
    Many of us aren't good at following instructions to begin with.  Even if we are, we have a tendency of losing them.
    What a world of chaos we have created for ourselves.
    I agree Randy D.  Life has become a process of pushing buttons, staring at screens, and not keeping it simple.
    I miss the days of getting up and turning the knob to change the channel.  We only had 4 back then.
    I miss the days of getting up to answer the phone with the long cord hanging on the kitchen wall.
    I don't miss file cabinets but I do miss hard copies of pictures.

    JUST PUSH THE BUTTON!  And then another and another and look what you could have!!


      July 17, 2020 12:25 PM MDT
    1

  • 10635
    The original TV remote - your kids.
      July 17, 2020 1:04 PM MDT
    1

  • 17592
    I harp on this all of the time.  I'll take this opportunity to say, You ain't seen nothing yet!  Wait until they take our currency away and inflict digital money on us.    Is the current coin shortage real or contrived?
      July 17, 2020 9:04 PM MDT
    1

  • 53503

     

      Good point, and quite timely, too. Just today in response to the shortage of coins, I went to my credit union to get 4 rolls of quarters, 2 rolls of dimes and 1 roll of nickels. I was told that each member was restricted to 2 rolls of each denomination, also due to the shortage.   
      Admittedly, my wife and I don’t use coins very much or very often, so my trip was more for “it’s better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them” than it was for dire necessity. Also, the credit union had suspended its previous schedule of being open 6 days a week, and today being a Friday, it was swamped with a long line of people seeking transactions that had to be completed inside as opposed to the ATM. 

    ~

     

      July 17, 2020 11:16 PM MDT
    1