I recently spent the better part of an hour trying to fill out an on-line retailer survey. Normally I wouldn’t spend any part of one millisecond on such an exercise, but a shopping experience bothered me enough that I decided the survey was worth my time. After all, a retailer can’t be expected to fix a problem if said retailer doesn’t know one exists. (And besides… I really don’t want to stop shopping at this particular place, especially since my husband is convinced that’s where most of my paycheck goes and life is easier if I just let him continue to believe that.)
The reason I spent the better part of an hour I’ll never live again has nothing to do with the retailer and everything to do with the process by which I had to complete the survey. The only way to complete a on-line survey is on-line, on a computer.
I lost count of the times I saw the “cannot display the webpage” message during the survey. I had “very good” signal strength on my not-so-high-speed Internet connection (where we live, “high speed” only happens when the fire truck leaves the station). My operating system and antivirus software were all up to date. Although I will confess that I haven’t “defragged” in awhile, I am just not so sure that my personal computer’s disk drive needs to be any less fragmented than the grey matter that sits between my ears.
But really, I don’t think my issue with that hour I’ll never get back is so much the computer, or the connection, as just the whole idea of how dependent I have become on the technology. I work with computers all day, every day. Someone said, back in the sixties when computers the size of a room were invented, that someday we would all enjoy a 30-hour work week. I’d like to meet that person and give them a piece of what’s left of my mind after I’ve spent all day, every day, with my eyes glued to a computer screen. But the dependency doesn’t end with the work day; if when I get home I want to know how my friends and relatives are doing, I have to check Facebook or text on my smartphone because pretty much nobody in my circles calls anymore.
I use the computer for everything from keeping up with the news to diagnosing the funny looking spot on my leg. I can find anything I want to know about any subject by typing a few simple words into a search engine. If I so choose, I can shop and pay my bills in the comfort of my pajamas and fuzzy slippers. Some days I don’t have to go to the office because I can access everything I need from home.
If not for the computer, I wouldn’t have worried so much that the funny looking spot on my leg could lead to bad news from a dermatologist. So I probably should have been relieved when he assured me that the funny looking spot was nothing more than a funny looking spot that just pops up every now and again on skin as old as mine.
Who knew?!? I guess that’s just one more thing mama never told me.
But you’d think that the search engine would have…