We are all shaken up by the tech disruptions in society. As I write a few keystrokes in a, to most of us, the obscure program has come close to crippling large sectors of society with the computer “blue screen of death.” Flights canceled, deliveries disrupted, and banks slowed to a crawl. A plethora of things are going wrong, and many people are wondering if the days of Terminators and “Skynet” are in the offing. No, folks, it was not just a film!
OK, I made that last up. I haven’t actually heard anyone say that, but I thought it. After all, critical changes in people’s lives, not being there for significant life events, can’t pay bills, get money, maybe can’t shop for food. Big enough to move the headlines from politics to technology.
When I worked for UPS, a disruption like this made us return to paper. We dragged out old forms and procedures used before we had sophisticated hand-held computers that recorded all delivery transactions. It was a pain, and recovery after an outage meant entering all that data into the electronic systems. That was at the dawn of modern history, and I’ve long since retired from that company. I dread to think of the implications now, some twenty years onward.
Never is a very dangerous word!
When it comes to backup systems, in my workshop, if the power fails, I still have all the old-fashioned backup systems—hand tools. UPS still had paper systems. The problems compound when you are so deep into the tech that you no longer have any manual backup systems or are so taken with the tech that you feel that they can never fail. As I write this blog, there are notebooks on the shelf above, a manual backup system.
If the bank fails me, I have the equivalent of old-fashioned money in the mattress. You laugh? A few weeks ago, a bank locked me out of my account. Later, they admitted that there had been no bad login attempts—their system had just glitched.
It was one hell of a glitch. I needed to buy medications. Luckily, I had cash backup. The backup was courtesy of my parents, who had recalled the bank failures of the 1930s and instilled in me the need to always have some cash available and not trust banks.
A long time ago, a science teacher I had spent some class time discussing the stages of technological development and product design. One of the things he emphasized was that mature technology was simple to use and reliable. Do you trust tech? How much do you trust it? The systems that pay us, transport, and communicate with us all seem to be much more vulnerable than they seem wise. Have we placed absolute trust in things that are too prone to failure? And do we have reliable backup systems for when they fail inadvertently or maliciously?
Perhaps something that would improve our lives currently is more reliable systems. And let the programmers play with the added bells and whistles for later.
I once heard a software developer quip that an easy-to-use program didn’t have enough features yet.
Now, go ye forth, and sin no more. Remember that as the famous software developer Anonymous said – “It’s not a bug, it’s an undocumented feature!”
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The Microsoft fiasco the other day made it very difficult for me to talk to Sirius about how I didn’t want to pay the new rates for Mohammed’s radio. I finally got through and all was well. IF there were radio stations here — well there are 3 but two of them are really the same one — I wouldn’t even buy Sirius but once a year — St Patrick’s day — it’s worth it. ☘️
I’ve got a free Spotify account I rarely use. but I really can’t listen in the shop it’s too distracting. In our area however, there are some extended play commercial stations that are pretty good for when I travel. Is your rectption not too good?
I can listen to anything through my phone in the car but since our power goes out pretty often for longish periods of time, and during those times my phone is my internet access, and I don’t have unlimited data, AND that sometimes goes down, Sirius at the 70% off price is the best deal. As for legit radio stations, there are very few. 1 1/2 FM and no AM coming through.
No one lives here. The radio station in Alamosa (where I gave an interview about the China book — that was fun) is also Taos so that’s like one station though it comes through as two. There’s a station in Salida that is sometimes clear and sometimes not and mostly talk radio. KHEN
Makes you wish for “Texas Radio and the Big Beat coming out of the Virginia swamps…
With a back beat narrow and hard to master” — when my family had road-trips back in the day my dad always tuned in those gigantic AM stations in Texas. It was a hoot.
I’ve lived places like that where the choices are limited. You have your advantages and disadvantages. I spent more time creating with fewer distractions.
I read that piece of news as “technical OUTRAGE”, not “outage”. And I thought, “Yeah, I get really pissed off when the WiFi is slow, too.”
well is it an outage, but it’s outrage too!
We too always have some cash with us. And I have my notebooks too. I remembered Second Sleep by Robert Harris.