Technology, Shmechnology

How many of you out there have had to call customer service? Right. Now how many of you have had to call Microsoft's customer service? Yup. Well, we all know that customer service, especially in the tech industry, is by and large outsourced to India. Or Pakistan. But that's not the point. The point is customer service and time. Did you know that these people have no idea what they are talking about. None. Absolutely no idea. They are dealing with an "if/then" set of scenarios that are listed on a grand help page in the sky. And this isn't just Microsoft, its all the damn customer service people. What happened to people wanting to learn something, becoming expert at it and then being there to help their fellow traveler down the oh-so-bumpy road of technology?

You're probably still stuck on the "if/then" scenario thing. Well, that basically means that if this happens then you do this. And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and... you get the point.

This is why when all else fails you are told: "OK, well, we are going to have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall the system software. I'll wait." WE? Who the hell are we? There is no WE in a hard drive wipe and system reinstall. There is only me. And it only happens at 3am and it is a very very very lonely experience. So thank you but no thank you. At no point should you ever be told to wipe the hard drive with the words "I'll wait" following. In fact at no point should you ever have to wipe the hard drive. That's the last resort answer in the "if/then" scenarios. And, just like a choose your own adventure novel, all scenarios except one will lead to that answer.

Getting back to the title of this post. Last I checked technology is supposed to be a help to us, not a hindrance. One would think, right? For example, first there was a piece of rock used to etch scratches into a wall leading to some guy cutting himself and realizing he could use the blood to make the same marks, only without so much force. He unfortunately died because of premature blood loss. But his friend saw what was happening while eating a pomegranate and thought, "wait, this is red I think I can do what he's doing without the unfortunate side effect of death." Well, jump time to a guy with the wherewithal to put said ink in a tube and make it so you could write with it - the birth of the pen - which lead to the ink being put on a stripe and being hit with keys to make a mark on a piece of paper - the birth of the typewriter - which then lead to the inkless machines we use today called computers. Perhaps a slightly simplified overview of the birth of computers, but a pretty sound one if you ask me. Nonetheless, each innovation was to make life easier. But at some point each innovation came with a learning curve. And each learning curve called for someone with expertise to teach or explain how the new technology worked. And each time there needed to be more and more expertise until some schmuck thought "hey, why train these people I'll write it all down and that way there'll be a record of how to do it." Actually, not a bad idea. But with the increasing refinements came increasing difficulty and suddenly in order to get a simple calculation of 4+5=9 you had to go through a room full of vacuum tubes and put a frickin' punch card into a slot and wait ten minutes. BUT IT DID THE CALCULATION, DAMN IT! And there was someone standing on the sideline with a book 6 inches thick explaining how to put said punch card in said slot to get said answer of 9.

If you ask me we should go back to the rock on the wall.

Well, we can't so we have the fun of Internet Explorer ceasing to connect to the internet. Now, this wouldn't really be a problem, normally. In fact I'm not the biggest fan of Internet Explorer. But certain programs like Norton Firewall or Norton Antivirus need to use it. Ah, here's where technology becomes schmechnology. And the irony has the "i" dotted. 3 hours on the phone to India and we found that The very program that was needing Internet Explorer to fix the problem was creating the problem it needed to fix in the first place. Huh? Yes. The Antivirus software was having a technical difficulty and asked me to connect to the internet to solve the problem. I did so with a, in my opinion, far superior browser, Netscape. I clicked on all the right links and, low-and-behold, I was told the next step would only work if using IE (Internet Explorer). So, like the dutiful computer user I am I clicked on the icon and got... nothing. Yup. That's why I called Microsoft. And 3 hours and a degree in computer science later I removed the Norton software from the computer and, magically, IE (as we now call it) worked!

"If/then." Remember that.

I didn't need to go through a registry reinstall of every .dll. I don't even know what that means. All I had to do was uninstall the program. COULDN'T HE HAVE TOLD ME THAT FIRST??!?!??!?!?

Apparently not.

So I lost a portion of my life that I'll never ever ever get back. At least I didn't have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall. Not like when I couldn't figure out why my DVDRW drive didn't work. Turns out I didn't have the right disks. But that didn’t stop the lady "helping me" from getting pissy and telling me the only way to solve the problem was to wipe and reinstall. To which I told her, in no uncertain terms to wipe and reinstall.

So, the lesson of the day. Technology doesn't save time. It just gives the appearance of saving time. Just count how many hours a day you wait for your computer to finish "thinking about something" or how long it takes for the ATM to give you your money or how long it takes for that damn door to open at the bank. You'll see then we're all better off using rocks.