Technology Dependence

This has been the kind of week where society's dependence on technology has become apparent to me.  I, for one, have become addicted to technology.  I know that this is the case because over the last few weeks I have become increasingly annoyed with the internet outages I was experiencing a few times a day.  It all peaked on Wednesday when they became persistent.  Thursday I was offline all day.

Coincidentally, my mother in-law also suffered an outage to her internet connectivity this week.  In her case it was a trojan that made it on to her computer system.  It slowed the performance down terribly and kept redirecting her web browser to various advert and dubious websites.  It took me most of the day Tuesday to resolve her problem.

Some time ago I heard an interesting anecdote about a airline traveller who goes from bliss to pissed-off in a matter of minutes.  He discovers, upon boarding, that his airplane is equipped with in-flight internet access.  After take-off the crew announces that the system is defective and that it will not be available during this flight.  The passenger is fuming.

It is amazing how quickly we become dependent on new gadgets and technology and how rapidly, consequently, we become troubled when the gadgets are not working.  In the case of the passenger it took a few minutes for this behaviour to show up.

The Bell Canada technician who solved my problem was a philosopher.  I asked him about different technologies that his employer was working on and his answers were poignant - coming from a man who works for a company that is helping to spread the use of technology.

The connection I had already supplied 7 mbps.  They can do up to 25 mbps on copper.  What more do you need?  He then said that he wishes he could get rid of his mobile phone.  If people can't reach him, too bad!  Leave a message!  He then said that because Bell now offers repair services on Saturdays and Sundays he has been forced to start working weekends again.

In his opinion, consumers' dependence on these gadgets has taken away from our quality of life.  People can't survive a weekend without internet access and demand service asap.  People need to be reachable at all times.  Are we much happier today than we were yesterday when these demands, needs, wants, desires and possibilities did not exist?  Should consumers really get all that fired up?  In his opinion, no.  Go outside, play a game, relax.

Time to post this entry on my blog, on Facebook and Twitter.  Have I made AdSense revenue today?  How much traffic came to my blog yesterday?  I need to know...NOW.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!