Both at my office and in my family, I’m the guy who knows the most about electronic devices: Computers and associated hardware/software, cell phones, digita cameras, etc. My wife knows nothing about them whatever and I now have two adult daughters, and one teenager at home, who know a little but not a lot. So, both at my office and in my family, I’m the go-to guy for technical problems. My daughter in Boston has been calling me because she can’t get on the wireless network in the home she’s sharing with some people for the summer. My daughter in Missississispsisipi, also can’t get on the Internet at her summer apartment. My wife just called to say that a bunch of vacation photos appear to have…disappeared from the flashcard in my digital camera she is using today. There’s a problems with two computers at my office that I’m trying to work on in my “spare time.”
All this to say MODERN TECHNOLOGY IS TOO COMPLICATED!
First on my list of demonic technologies: 1.
Computer networking. It remains ridiculously complex.
Second, the status of “technical support.” It’s gone to hell, by way of India. I suggested my daughter call Dell about her laptop problems. It’s less than a year old. Right. There’s a “fee-based” support line. The cheapest deal is $99.
The big problem: Increasingly complicated technology. Fewer people who really understand it. We’re in deep trouble.
No, they can’t (or more likely won’t), but they can show one how to hitch a horse up to a hack, and teach you how to drive it. And let’s talk about farming, Amish have that and Barn Raising down to an old world science!
I have to agree with Cran here, and though we can make fun of them I suppose, I really think they are on the correct path regarding how to live good, and right.
Sorry. As much as I admire the Amish and Mennonite Old orders for their fortitude and perseverence, the fact is that they live in an artificial world, maintained through the sufferance of others, and not through any special ability of their own.
What you and yours are suffering from, Dale, is a lack of respect: lack of respect for the technology, and lack of respect for the environment in which that technology lives.
You have several options to find a path that will meet everyone’s needs. One way is to read some how-to books and manuals to learn how to make it all work. Another is to have those who want the technology to work for them (i.e. lazy family members) to read up on how to make it work for themselves. The more expensive option is to pay an expert (Nerds on Wheels, etc.) to make stuff work for you.
If you are going to choose Cberry’s recommended path of turning away from technology, you should do so knowing why you have turned away. If your choice to turn away is based on fear, laziness or lack of respect, you will not find any peace in the Amish path.
(Darn. I can never find that big gong when I want it. )
My complaint is that when things are that complicated, it’s often cheaper to replace them than to fix them. This leads to a ridiculous amount of solid waste, much of which is toxic.
You might like this, Dale. It is a blog about how sad today’s technology
is, and how our grandchildren will laugh at us in 2050. It’s written by
ex-professor of Computer Science at NCSU, Marshall Brain, who also
started howstuffworks.com
On the other hand, I’m getting to the age where it’s getting exhausting just thinking about mastering one more computer/cell phone/microwave oven/programmable thermostat… Think I may be becomming a Luddite too.
About those Amish and Mennonite folks. While I admire the “simple life” in some respects, I also like flush toilets, hot showers, a little music on the stereo, etc. I have always wondered why they sort of froze in time around the late 1800’s. Had they waited until the 1930’s, they could have the advantage of almost all the things that take the real backbreaking drugery out of life and still had a very simple life as compaired to today.
Ha. Some years back I was chatting with an Omaha woman (tribe, not city), and the conversation got around to upsides and downsides of the old and the new. I remember her saying, “One thing I am NOT willing to give up is toilet paper! No way.”
I disagree entirely. As the technology around increases, the answer is supposed to be to buy (and then read) books about how to make it all work?
I just read a book on computer networks. I struggled with it and I still can’t solve all the problems I or my family encounter. I have a bachelor’s, two masters, and a Ph.D. Is the answer for, say, a single mother who works for a living–and who wants her children to have a working computer–to buy and read books about how to fix computers? Does she need to call the Geek Squad and pay them? Or, it is reasonable for her to expect that she can plug the thing in and it will work as advertised?
In the real world it is not reasonable to buy computerized equipment and have it work right out of the box. None of us could afford the technology if it were polished to that degree. So we pay for it in our time, aggravation and tears. Like anything else, it is a compromise between what we want versus what we can afford/are willing to bear.
I applaud your efforts and your willingness to help, but if you can’t figure this out for your family, I would leave it to them to resolve their problems. If they want it bad enough they will figure it out for themselves, find the dosh to pay someone else to fix it, or come to grips with what their real needs are.
Its amazing how resourceful family members can be when they want something badly enough. It doesn’t make sense that you should beat yourself up trying to play the role of “Super Dad”. Why not provide them with an opportunity for some personal growth (heh-heh).
I am actually hearing beeping sounds in my house even when there aren’t any. My husband’s phones, answering machine, computers, microwave, watches, everything beeps. I mean what is the deal with the beeping thing? Things didn’t used to beep all the time. It is almost impossible to figure out how to use a clock radio—every button has multiple functions. My own radio, and I have to get out the instructions to do anything. There is no way to apply reason to the figuring out process. Or watches. You just have to hit buttons in various orders hoping something will work. I find this being stumped by the simplest items to be sort of weird and scary.
In our town there is now a business that fixes computers and I guess helps people with software, etc. Anyway, we haven’t had the need to take anything to this fellow, but I think this is what we need. Someone who can say it is or isn’t worth fixing and then fix it or not. It will be like car repairmen. But of course, you have to pay him. I tried reading about computers and I decided I would rather read Dickens. Life is only so long.
And yet, you refuse to buy a Mac? Steve Job’s brilliance is keeping
the Macintosh standards in control. If Microsoft didn’t have to run on
a billion different combinations of non-standard hardware, it would
probably be 100 times more stable. I dream of the day when the
systems are so standardized that software knows what to expect
from every single machine it runs on. I think Japan will get there first,
since the government can control such things (the Japanese on an
all-digital cell phone system immediately… the government just
dismantled all analog cell towers. Americans still have to buy tri-mode
phones to guarantee decent coverage.)
Why not? And where are you Mac owners now that I need you?
Its amazing how resourceful family members can be when they want something badly enough. It doesn’t make sense that you should beat yourself up trying to play the role of “Super Dad”. Why not provide them with an opportunity for some personal growth (heh-heh). >
Networking is actually a lot easier than it used to be. I have a wireless router at the house. When I wanted to set up my wife’s wireless laptop from work at our house, I just let it find available networks, typed in the WEP password, and we were good to go.
In the olden days of win 3.1 and Trumpet Winsock, things were harder. We won’t go into the details of daisy-chaining 10-base-2 cable with proper terminators, or the entire network goes down. Just on the software side, you had to know if you were PPP or SLIP, had to know obscure things like the values for Packet Vector, MTU, RWIN, and MSS, etc. Believe me..it’s a lot easier these days.
True for some things like networking and even just setting up your printer. Remember the good old days of serial port dot matrix printers? I can remember wasting an entire day setting and resetting banks of dip switches trying to get the damn thing to talk to the computer.
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