Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. It's supposed to save our time and allow us to accomplish more with the time we have available. But lately, I'm finding it does exactly the opposite. I sit down at my computer to do what I think will be a simple ten minute job... and two hours later, I haven't even started on that job because I've had to do some urgent software update... or an urgent software update I haven't even chosen to do at that time has started anyway, slowing my computer down to a snail's crawl. Why does software have to update so frequently? Half the time it updates and you don't even notice a difference. It's just stolen 20 minutes of your life for no reason at all. Not to speak ill of the recently departed, but the absolute worst culprit here was iTunes... which is why I removed that service from my computer and refused to ever use it again.
Or I log onto a website I haven't used in a while to carry out a simple task... and suddenly it wants to know my password. Now I know you're not supposed to use the same password for every site you visit... but you're not supposed to write your passwords down either. How can I remember all those different passwords when I can barely remember to put my socks on in the morning? So I click 'Forgotten Password'. And then it asks me a security question. Can I remember the answer I chose when I set that security question? Can I heck. So then I have to call the helpline... and don't even start me on helplines.
I could go on, but you get the point. I have no witty observations to make about this subject, nor do I have any radical solutions (other than smashing the looms and going back to writing on slate with chalk). I just needed to get this off my chest. I spent three hours last night trying to fix my Blackberry which had stopped receiving emails. I rebooted the device, I went on the Blackberry website (which told me nothing), in the end I called my service provider... who informed me I wasn't alone. "Didn't you hear?" the woman at the call centre asked (after I'd wasted 25 minutes listening to recorded messages and pressing the right combination of keys that wins you a real human being). "It's been on the news and on the BBC website and everything." "No," I told her. "I haven't had time to watch the news or surf the web... I've been trying to fix this @%&#! computer!"
