21 January 2024 | Tech is a Slow, Creeping Death

A day in the life of using technology

At some point, I had decided to give an aunt of mine an iPad mini, and as I was showing her how to use it and what she could do with it, it struck me: this is complicated. It is not easy to use at all.

I am growing increasingly frustrated with tech. It is a hindrance and a pest that takes more time to deal with than its purported ideal of saving time. The conceit that any of these devices is “intuitive” is pure marketing and tech enthusiast nonsense. With each new model, the operating systems become more complex, requiring more arcane knowledge of finding settings or drilling down a menu tree to accomplish anything.

We’ve all been sold on the idea that you don’t need to be tech savvy to use a phone or tablet, but that’s not been true for a long time, if ever. Users have been forced into a maze by software engineers who cannot conceive that people do not view the world the way they do. But we are all at their mercy, made to learn how to do simple things that will be totally upended with a new version of the operating system. What you previously remembered how to do has been moved and changed for no other reason than to change it, under the lie that it’s easier.

Bull. Shit.

Nothing works right. It is a constant barrage of being forced to login to cloud services although you’ve just done that. It is constantly needing to reactivate something that you thought had been done before. It is being forced to create accounts for things that should not need accounts in the first place, which is merely a prelude to having that information stolen in the inevitable hack. You are then required to come up with an even more elaborate password that didn’t protect you from the hack to begin with. And of course, we are told that we need to keep those elaborate passwords different across the multiple sites that we are now required to have for everything. This is still true even if your nanny web browser offers to make one for you.

I don’t think I have felt so disillusioned with tech. It just “doesn't work.” It is overly complicated and intrusive, constantly nagging us about needing to update, new versions, new features when all one wants to do is just get to work. (How many of you needed to login to a Zoom meeting as it’s about to start, only to be informed that YOU MUST install the latest update? Oh, what if the update fails?) And all these connected devices and services create a web around you where you cannot move. This is not empowering, and it does not open the floodgates of my creativity: it is a stupid prison partially of my own making. I could not even start writing this piece without being bugged for the umpteenth time from Microsoft to login to my account to create and edit documents. How did I log out in the first place?

(Oh, and don’t get me started about Siri. This must be the most pointless and stupid “assistant” ever. I have never regretted a purchase as much as an Apple HomePod that demands interaction with this piss-poor service. Honestly, it’s so irritating when using it for anything other than setting a timer.)

I am not so much of a rejectionist that I am going to throw out everything in protest. To me, that would be like buying a case of Bud Light and then shooting it, believing the joke is on Anheuser-Busch. But I do not see any of these devices and services becoming easier to use; the complexity curve will just continue to widen, and we are at the mercy of it all. Maybe the solution is to lessen the number of devices I own or just untether myself when I can, itself an increasingly difficult thing to do. At least my analog Traveler’s notebook doesn’t require an update to use whenever I want.

Yet.