Mono Monday : : Technology

I love my car because it has a back up camera, a radio  and because it it is red. I don't love it when it thinks its smarter than me...beeping insistently at me and flashing a red triangle when there is absolutely no discernible reason for it, or unnecessarily locking me in the car. I don't trust the GPS or the woman (we call her Heather) whose voice emanates from  the dashboard insisting that we turn around because the only address we have ever put into the GPS is in Los Angeles. Talk about distracted driving....it took me half an hour of fiddling to turn her off. 

I love my stove because it has burners and an oven that turn on and off with no digital readouts, no motherboards or relays to fall apart and because it is red. I had to go to the kitchen store and buy a little timer because it doesn't even have a clock. The timer is red too, and has a magnet on the back so I can stick it to the hood. It has dials and numbers and I set it by winding it.

The dryer stopped running yesterday and started dinging when it was full of wet clothes. It is very good about telling me to clean the lint filter (even when I already have) but when it stopped running full of wet clothes, all it told me was to call for service. It didn't tell me that when the service guy was in our kitchen the day before drinking coffee. He told us the dish dish washer would work fine if we didn't use soap in the sink. What's he going to tell us when he comes back in a week and a half about the dryer...not to put wet clothes in it?

Things may be 'wireless' but there still has to be a way to turn them on and off. We have fewer wires but we also have dozens of remote controls. Don't even get me started about passwords....

Why do they put lights on everything? We have red lights on the phones, on the vacuum cleaner, on the television and stereo controls (which are behind closed doors so we don't have to look at them). 

In our bedroom alone, we have little red lights on the phone, the light switches, and the little box that goes with the television. We don't have the television anymore, but we still have the box because we don't know what to do with it. None of these lights ever turns off. I don't even know what the  blue light under the bathroom sink goes with. I just see it through the crack in the cupboard door. It would take me almost as long to count all the unnecessary little lights in the house as it will take me to photograph our possessions.

As for serious technology...like computers, I am the first to admit that I struggle to keep up with even the most rudimentary computer technology, but I believe that the technology found in a computer or a phone these days has gotten ahead of even the most sophisticated of geniuses. Everyone is in agreement that the software on my computer is 'corrupted' but nobody seems to know what to do about it.

There is wonderful technology out there that is designed to make our lives easier, but when the time spent keeping it all running or getting it fixed exceeds the amount of time spent using it, life isn't easier. There are trade-offs for everything.  

I'm going to have to hang my wash on a clothesline...as soon as it stops raining....