Tech I Hate
Believe it or not, there are several types of technologies that I personally hate. Technologies that, although I really hate using, I still can’t live without. Here is my list (in no particular order):
- Cell Phones - miniaturization has a limit. Most of the new cell phones that are availble today make it slightly higher than my cheek bone. The biggest problem is that sound does not come out of my cheek bone. In addition, most cell phones can do half a million things including make a phone call. The problem is that they only have a few keys. This means that those half a million functions are mapped to about 12 keys. This guarantees usability hell. I have yet to find a ‘user friendly’ phone. On most of them, just trying to make a phone call is hard enough, let alone anything else. I do not want to surf the internet on my phone.
- Office Phones - These are about as bad as cell phones except that with a cell phone you at least get a manual to guide you, with most office phones you get half a million buttons mapped to half a million functions and no instructions anywhere as to which button does what. And to make things worse, most functions require these strange key combinations - press the L button followed by #321 and the vague number that you heard over the intercom. I think I have finally come to grips with the ‘press 9 and then the number you want to dial’ thing.
- Microwaves - My biggest problem with microwaves is that although they are relatively simple to use once you figure out how to use them, the process you use on one microwave will never ever be the same on another microwave. Each microwave has its own interface, has its own way of entering the cooking time, has its own procedure. How hard is it to standardize these things.
- Fax Machines - This is actually just an irrational fear of fax machines. I think if comes from the time that I was asked to fax an important document and ended up sending off three blank pages to the recipient. Apparently, I had placed the pages in the fax machine the wrong way. No one ever told me that you placed them in upside down.