What has technology wrought?

It hasn’t been any help to the math skills of kids who now use their cell phones to multiply numbers or do long division. It hasn’t helped humans with the improvements of their bodies because humans now spend the time they used to exercising playing computer games which means they spend more time sitting which is not a good thing. The developed human race is getting weaker due to lack of exercise. Where some would get exercise at work, their jobs have turned into ones where they run computers eight hours a day. The lack of fresh air and the closeness of working conditions in closed environments where everyone is breathing the same processed air others breathe out is just a disaster waiting to happen. We see this more and more often on cruise ships where many people get sick at once due to the fact the passengers are breathing mostly stale reprocessed air since the ships are now like apartment buildings and you might as well not be at sea at all. Many passengers never even go outside.

The love affair with computers has caused computers to be inserted into almost everything we do and not always with the best results. Take our cars for instance. Just about every car now has some sort of a computer in it. There was a story the other day about how an auto finance company shut down a car because its owner missed some payments. Here is the wrinkle, the owner was driving it on the highway when it shut down. This caused a very dangerous situation indeed. Should an owner who owes a finance company be put into a potentially deadly situation for not paying a bill? No one likes someone who doesn’t pay their bills. Sometime it is not the fault of the person because the company makes a mistake and sometimes the person just doesn’t have the money. It doesn’t matter what the excuse is, that is irrelevant, and nothing mentioned should carry a potential death penalty. On top of all this our cars are now susceptible to hackers who can control our speed, steering, brakes and much more putting all our lives in jeopardy.

Cell phones seem like a good thing on the surface. They certainly are convenient there is no denying that, but there is a constant debate going on about the radiation they put out and it is far from settled. Cell phones have caused many drivers to get into accidents some of which were deadly. Human nature dictates if something is convenient, it will be used by some in every situation no matter how much danger it puts them in and others. This is because everyone seems to think a bad accident could never happen to them. Ever go to a restaurant, ride on a public conveyance or go to a movie when someone was talking on a cell phone and wouldn’t stop. There is nothing more annoying than that except for a waiter sticking his thumb in your soup. There is also the question about the batteries in the cell phones dying just when you need them the most.

Technology is responsible for the new math and the business of trying to make tests all the same over the entire country. This has cause some test questions on the tests children take to make no sense what so ever. I think those out there who have young children in school will know where I am coming from. So called educators have managed to take a simple proposition like multiplying three numbers against three other numbers and turn it into something which at times no one can understand. The reason for this is they want every child to do the work leading up to the answer a certain way but many times they don’t know how to explain what they want clearly. It seems to be a question of showing how you got the answer rather than getting the answer correct and if you don’t show it the way they want you get a nice big zero. They are trying to make children act more like computers and have them all solve a problem the same way and have them work it out in the same order.

Another problem which technology has spawned is the overseas data help center. Companies like to think computer problems can be solved by anyone proficient with computers. While this may be true, it certainly doesn’t help someone in one country who has a problem being hooked up with someone in another country who barely speaks their language. This is frustrating beyond almost anything I can think of. This is particularly true of companies who have a unique piece of software you cannot get anywhere else. I remember the problem I had with a Microsoft help center in India when my Windows software suddenly told me I had to call a certain number to reinstall it. I couldn’t understand many of the numbers the lady was telling me to type.

This has led to something else I call the ignorant snob. Let me give you an example. You have a problem, you went to a website to order something and a question came up asking you if you want to place your orders on automatic every month and you reply no by checking the no box. A month later you receive an automatic order and call the company. You tell the phone representative what happened and they tell you that you have to be careful when checking the boxes asking about automatic orders. You tell them you checked no automatic orders and they tell you again you have to be careful in checking the boxes. This happened to me and I kept getting this speech until I told the representative I didn’t want to hear this again and had been shopping on this site for over 5 years and knew what I was doing and then she proceeded to act as if she didn’t believe me but was just appeasing me. This is where you usually don’t buy from this place anymore, but they had something I needed which I couldn’t get for near that price anywhere else.

I was actually in an automated bank one time where there were only machines and one lady in the center at a booth. The man in front of me went to a machine and punched in the amount of money he wanted and got a slip without any money. Apparently he had been charged so he went to the woman at the booth and told her what happened and she replied, “Impossible.” Is this what we are turning into, a society which thinks if a machine is charged with doing something it will always do it perfectly?

Advancements in technology are usually good, but there are many times when these same advances hurt us.