Technology: Pass/Fail
I sit here feeling frustrated with life.
Technology bites. Well, no, sometimes it’s good.
My problem is that I think we tend to think that more, bigger, better, flashier makes life easier. Easier must come faster and faster, and sometimes testing is shortened or skipped all together.
Just today, I ran into a snag with technology that could complicate my life for a year. A reminder didn’t get set, so no message was sent, so I’m not two weeks into an online course like I should be.
Part of me wants to sit and cry.
One moment, the universe is sending me a message to slow down and enjoy life, but I can’t. I have too many adult problems around money and bills and time to really just breathe. Physically, I need to.
The next, the dark overlords who prefer ignorance, poverty, and hopelessness are messing with the details through the shadowy dark web to complicate my life and prevent me from touching the future with encouragement, knowledge, and light. So I start playing my fight songs and and sharpening the sword of my tongue to begin a war of words to fight for what I feel I should rightfully get.
And then, as my brain applies logic and reason, I begin wait… for human intervention. I’ve made my case for letting me come on board and play catch-up. I’ve shown the situation in the learning management system (no class assignment even as of today), as well as where I got the delayed start date (when I couldn’t find the email with the real start date).
We expect technology to work and work for us and work well. When it doesn’t, not only are we disappointed but we get complications that spin life out of control.
Maybe that’s the problem. We think of technology as a creature. We expect it to live and breathe and never experience the technical equivalent of injury or illness. It is pure and good and will not fail.
Perhaps instead, we should see it as a tool. This tool is created by frail, feeble, fallible humans. As a result, the tool can be used for good or evil. The tool can have brokenness built into it because it was developed in a broken by broken man.
We should expect the tool to fail. Therefore, it should never replace humans, and it should always have a human support system.
