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Has technology simplified life?
By Lee Kucera
Our household has subscribed to the same national news magazine for 20 years. Recently I received a less-than-friendly letter from its publishers claiming they had repeatedly sought payment for our subscription, and were giving me one last chance before debtor's prison to send the money. They were right. I did miss the payment, and (apparently) numerous follow-up reminders, for a simple reason: I receive so much junk mail every month from the magazine that I tend to ignore it. The legitimate invoice must have been buried in the endless renewal notices, discount offers, two-for-the-price-of-one ploys, and special promotions that arrive almost weekly with the magazine's logo on it. That may be a lame excuse for not paying a bill, but I have to say it's a sign of the times.
When the management of every detail of the business of daily living was relegated to computer databases, an almost limitless capacity for spewing avalanches of paper at hapless consumers was unleashed. Computers, far from creating a paperless society (I haven't heard anyone make that claim for awhile, although it was an initial selling point for PCs) have accomplished the opposite: an unprecedented proliferation of paper that multiplies so fast that we can't keep up with it.
The fact that a flood of junk mail is propelled by computerized databases is hardly front-page news. But that is only one small aspect of contemporary life which technology has made more efficient, yet at the same time more complex, difficult, and time-consuming. Try to straighten out a credit card snafu through an 800 number some time, or reach a human being on the automated telephone tree at a county agency, or make a financial transaction anywhere if the computers are down, or fiddle around on the Internet searching unsuccessfully for an elusive topic through a tangled web of search engines.
Am I the only person who is frustrated by having to track not only the phone numbers of everyone I know, but their fax numbers, pager numbers, and cell-phone numbers as well? Who is wearied by the need to refer to a different PIN or password every time they use a calling card, ATM, email or voice mail? Who fumbles around at the check-out counter to find a "discount card"--for the office supply store, the pizza parlor, the beauty supply shop, the video rental place, the sporting goods emporium, and the supermarket--which clerks never would have been able to administer prior to computerized cash registers?
Some of the benefits of technology--in medicine, for instance--are undeniable. But when it comes to the flow of information, I don't see that instant and universal automatically means better. The eradication of privacy ... the loss of autonomy ... the de-personalization of human interaction ... those realities of modern life seem like a high price to pay for speed, convenience, and ease.
Well, I can fill out a form at the post office to help staunch the flow of unsolicited junk mail, but that won't diminish all the promotional stuff that arrives as an unwanted consequence of almost every magazine subscription. Meanwhile, I've learned to throw away, unopened, any envelope that promises me a 5.3 APR (at least two or three a day--oy, the trees), and I've decided I don't need all those retail discount cards in the first place. But being proactive in stemming the tide of mindless computer-generated junk that threatens to engulf our lives takes time, time, time--the single commodity that we have always been assured technology creates more of--and it feels like trying to plug a leaking dike with one small finger. Say I'm sweating the small stuff, if you will. But please don't say that technology has made our lives any simpler.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
