IF YOU ARE REAL, PRESS ONE

Are there actually people out there who can’t wait until they get home to find out what e-mails they have?

I’m looking at these ads for gadgets.  Some little thingies you can hold in your hand or put in your purse to get driving directions, get your e-mail, and take photos when you’re out and about.

Even if I did have a longing for a camera in a thingy, I wouldn’t buy one just because I don’t like to read instruction manuals.  I don’t like to have to figure out how to program something.

Pity the parents who have to provide this stuff for their kids who just have to have it because “all the other kids have it.”

And when the gadgets break or don’t work right (and that is inevitable), then you can buy some more, and read some more instruction manuals.

I’d never want a “smart house,” where you have to program this and that.  I don’t want to have to read an instruction manual just to get my house to be a house.  I don’t want a thermostat with anything but a lever.  No little screen or buttons please.  Nor do I want a house wired with the latest (soon to be obsolete) technology.

Nor do I want a car with bells and whistles.  More bells and whistles just means more to repair.  When it comes time for a new car I’ll try to find one without a GPS and without a voice telling me, “You’ve made a wrong turn.”  I’ve never experienced that, but I’ve heard about these newfangled things.  I know how to use a map.  I don’t need a gadget giving me directions.  I wouldn’t trust a gadget to get it right.

If I were in charge of a phone company, I wouldn’t add any bells and whistles to the phones until they were actually capable of functioning as phones, that is, someone could actually hear the other party without a lot of static.  Why can’t I buy a phone that looks like a phone and actually works?

When I call the bank, I don’t want to hear “press 1 . . . press 2 . . . press 3 . . . press 4, etc.” through a half dozen menus, none of which say, “press zero if you are a real person who would like to talk to a real person.” 

Before humanity invents any more gadgets and “conveniences” that are either useless, annoying, or downright inconvenient, maybe we should make the trains run on time.  Maybe we should make sure everyone on the Planet has enough to eat. 

When something actually works, it can be wonderful.

Full-size image

I don’t want to program anything.  Not a phone.  Not a car.  Not a house.  Not a bank phone system.  Not a computer.  Not a DVD player.  Not anything.  I don’t like interacting with machines.  I don’t want to bond with these things.  Software is not something I want to spend time hassling with.  And maybe “program” is not the right word.  “Use menus”?  Whatever.  Even the copy machine at the copy machine store has a menu.  Even the gas pump has a menu.  Even the clock on my stove has a menu.  So often menus are not user-friendly. 

So far, I’ve managed to avoid using a cell phone even once (I don’t think people should be blasting their brain cells with microwave radiation).  How much longer can I hold out?

Now I admit that machines are essential to civilization, and if that’s your job to keep it all running smoothly, that’s a noble job.  But do machines have to be intruding into and ruling our everyday lives?  Calling the bank to check on some problem they created should not become a job for me.  After all, I am the customer.  They are supposed to be serving me, not making me work – “press 1, press 2, blah, blah, blah, and if you didn’t catch all that, press 9 to hear the menu again, and press pound to return to the main menu and start all over again.”  Shouldn’t the machine be invisible?  Or at least unobtrusive and undemanding?  Shouldn’t there be a limit on how many phone buttons I have to press?

Why can’t they design a bank phone answering system that has respect for the customer?  I just wait for something on the menu that maybe a machine could not deal with like, “If you have lost your card, press 8.”  Seriously.  That way maybe I can reach a real person.

The worst is the pseudo-human voice at the phone company ordering me to say “yes” or “no,” then I get disconnected five or ten times, because the real person who is being paid to answer the phone doesn’t feel like doing it, and when I call back again and again, I get the pseudo-human voice again and again.  I say “yes . . . . ,” “yes . . . . ,” “yes . . . . ,” into its voice recognition ears.   The one at the Internet service provider keeps saying something like, “I didn’t quite get that, could you repeat it?  Say ‘billing’ or say ‘technical support’.”  Just dreadful.  I try to keep my voice from sounding irritated.  After all, they are recording “for training purposes.” 

Has it come to this?  That I am now being ordered to speak by a machine?  How degrading!  Am I now the servant of the machine?  Bad enough to be ordered to press buttons.  Some people train their dogs to “speak” on cue.  Now a machine is training me.  For sure, the Queen of England has never experienced this indignity.  I suppose you are saying, “It’s alright to talk to an inanimate object, after all, on Star Trek, Captain Kirk talks to his starship’s computer all the time.”

I think that next time I am confronted by a pseudo-human telling me, “say ‘one’ or say ‘two’,” I will say, “fiddlesticks” or “go-fly-a-kite,” or simply “ah-ah-ah-ah.”  That will scramble it nicely and get me a real person on the line.

I have yet to find virus protection software that does not give me a conniption.  Of course the company doesn’t have technical support except something online, and if I’m having trouble installing their product, then of course I can’t go online while my computer is unprotected.  Guess how I spent the better part of Thursday.  (And it was only supposed to take five minutes.)

Now I find out that one of the local big box stores that sells electronics will do computer setup and diagnostics.  Well, it’s about time.  But will they do it right?

If I were in charge of everything, the trains would run on time.  There would be no hungry people.  There would be no global warming.  The phones would work.  Computers would work.

And no one but programmers would have to program anything.  No one would have to read instruction manuals, install anything, or press any buttons.

-2008-

Slide show, music, and folders on my main page.

X Keywords:   technology MSN Windows Live Spaces X