Technology - Too Unreliable and Too Complicated

it's what has to be relied on today, however, in this global economy

where husband works, they have cut back on his travels overseas so he must rely on technology to keep projects moving forward

glad he's able to do that now as dislike when he's travelled more and been away from home

expos4ever said:

Yesterday afternoon at work, a senior manager had us all gathered in the video-conference room. She intended to share a Powerpoint slide with two other offices at remote locations as well enable all meeting participants (remote and local) to interact with each others via video-conference.

I knew this was doomed to fail. And it did, like it generally does. She called in the geek squad and, after about 10-15 minutes, all was sorted out. Until there was a crash.

And don't get me started on my cell-phone. The thing is way too complex and not well designed from an ergonomic perspective in my opinion.

Am I the only one who thinks we have become enslaved to unreliable and overly complex technology?

Incidentally, I am an engineer by trade and make my living explaining technology to other people.

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Yes, to some extent I think we can overdo it with our reliance upon technology, but being that I'm no engineer or technology expert, I'm at pains to say exactly as to when and where we may reach the limits with how we utilize the products of our creative ingenuities. However, I do like to philosophically critique the ideology of Transhumanism, for both good and bad.

I run IT for a school and our principal is pretty good about letting me spend money to upgrade things when it needs to happen. So for our situation it's not so bad.

That said, being education based there's a huge pushed from various directions to use emerging technology for this and that: guess who's job it is to fix it when someone decides to use a new one and it doesn't work properly.
We also have a huge push in our school system to use Google Apps over Microsoft; which is good in theory (especially in terms of licensing) but there's just a lot that Gapps can't do at the moment that the Office suite does, which frustrates staff to no end. We also have random Internet problems (air fibre) and sometimes it will run really slow or drop out altogether: guess what isn't usable when that happens.

I don't think the problem is complex technology, I think the problem is corporations jumping too quick onto emerging technologies without considering the ramifications.

expos4ever said:

Yesterday afternoon at work, a senior manager had us all gathered in the video-conference room. She intended to share a Powerpoint slide with two other offices at remote locations as well enable all meeting participants (remote and local) to interact with each others via video-conference.

I knew this was doomed to fail. And it did, like it generally does. She called in the geek squad and, after about 10-15 minutes, all was sorted out. Until there was a crash.

And don't get me started on my cell-phone. The thing is way too complex and not well designed from an ergonomic perspective in my opinion.

Am I the only one who thinks we have become enslaved to unreliable and overly complex technology?

Incidentally, I am an engineer by trade and make my living explaining technology to other people.

Click to expand...

Let's just say that I wouldn't be heartbroken if they ripped out
all the self-checkout machines in our stores. Those things are
more trouble than they're worth, imo.

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The manager of our laboratory wants to replace all of our laboratory books with tablets. I've never had a book go into a coma, run out of memory, have a battery die, or refuse to let me open it. All of that has happened with the tablets. Anyone can troubleshoot the design of a book, but only one person in the lab can troubleshoot the design of the electronic templates. I'm the most tech-savvy member of my particular work group, and I just want to keep the trusty pen and paper.

I wish people would ask themselves what this technology can do that they couldn't do before, instead of becoming enamored with the latest and greatest.