Technological Revenge Part 1

Hey, this wasn’t in the brochure.

One day, if allowed to research such things and report them, historians may debate the exact point we allowed ourselves to be enslaved.  While I am not sure when this all began, there have been signs of the loss of self determination for decades but it’s only now with all the tech we “enjoy” in everyday life that the bow of the ship of life is finally going under.

Many years ago, I heard an interesting theory, if you will, from an unlikely source.  National Public Radio, NPR.  Unlikely because I rarely listened to NPR.  The interviewee spoke of “technological revenge”, a term I have since tried to look up but find nothing.  Technological revenge is when we adopt a specific technology to solve a specific problem but the tech either makes the problem worse or, more likely, creates other problems as bad or worse than the problem it was to solve.

The example given by the speaker was washers and dryers.  They, according to him, were marketed as a means to save housewives time.  Instead of the daily trip to the dry cleaners, they could launder and dry clothes in their own home, saving time, gas and wear and tear on the car.  Instead, these innovations anchored the housewife at home more than she ever had been as she now had to wait for these wonders of modern homes to finish their tasks before she could leave or risk a lot of time and work ironing out all the creases.  Oh, and that fire hazard thing too.

While that was before my time, I have witnessed many examples of technological revenge in my life.  In the greater Tokyo area at the very least, we have a “Suica” rechargeable train pass system.  In theory, this recharged card pass allows light rail commuters to more quickly enter and exit the gates at train stations.  But this is false.  There used to be a picket line of ticket punchers across station gates.  As passengers entered the station they presented their tickets and they were punched without the passenger needing to even slow down.  These ticket punchers were able to handle passengers entering and exiting at the same time.  Very fast and smooth.  The position of train station ticket puncher has long since been eliminated.

In their place, we have automated ticket gates that take up space impeding ease of movement and only allow movement of a single person at a time.  This creates bottle necks in the flow of people greater than what we had with the ticket punchers.  These auto gates accept either printed paper tickets or the magnetic Suica cards.  Some take both.  It takes the machine some time to mechanically move the paper ticket through its corse to be scanned, much longer than it did\ for a ticket puncher to punch several to many tickets. Back before the panic, when I caught the 7:03 train into Tokyo every morning and took different trains therein once I got inside the city, daily there were  numerous times I witnessed tickets getting caught in more than one gate and a single station and or the Suica readers not reading the cards or people, often myself, would not have enough money on the card and have to wait for all those behind to move out of the way allowing us to back out and recharge our cards.  For the malfunctioning gates, a light and siren go off but most stations have just one station attendant now.  This attendant is busy with people at the widow so the numbers of gates that are passable are reduced until he can break away from the service window and attempt to fix the gates.   Not uncommon to see 1/3 or even a half of the gates disabled during the morning rush hour.  Then we have the touch screen ticket vending/charging machines.  I am am sure they work fine early in the morning when they are clean of all the gunk we humans have on our hands that smear the screens quickly when we have thousands of people using them in a short time.  I have missed trains as I tried repeatedly to get the touch screen to register my touch.  All of these problems simply did not exist in the era of physical push button vending machines and paper tickets with human ticket punchers.  What we have now is a mess and for the life of me I can not understand why in the hell this is thought to be better than what it replaced.   Technological Revenge.

Sticking with the same tech, touch screens we have many more examples.  But before I get into a couple more, let me assure you that this is all ground work needed to make a bigger point.  Please stick with me. 

I miss the old radios in cars.  Without taking my eyes off the road for even the briefest of instants, I could reach my right hand over and find the two knobs, one for tuning the other for volume.  I no longer recall which knob for which but I bet my muscle memory does.  Even with the big preset buttons, it was easy to feel which one I wanted and if I missed, no biggy, just try again.  Could just as easily adjust the speaker output.  Never had to take my eyes off the road.  Now it is well nigh impossible to change anything on the radio when driving.   The touch screen buttons are smaller than my fingers and the car is moving.  Can not tell one touch screen button from the other by touch alone, so I must look at the screen and cycle through multiple menus and sub menus.   I do not like taking my eyes off the road.  There have been reports of police cars crashing while in pursuit.  The pursuing officer must input data into their onboard computers while driving at high speeds.  How this was not known from the get go to be a bad idea is another mystery of life.  Technological revenge.

For several years I had the pleasure of teaching 3rd year Biomedical students.  They were studying to design medical equipment.  Through them I learned that the doctors they talked with in Japan hate the touch screen medical devices foisted upon them.  The example I remember is the new machines controlling oxygen flow to patients.  In the not too distant past, the air flow was controlled by a valve.   Whomever throttled the valve could actually feel the air flow and with practice and experience they could learn how much was correct.  At least as important, changes were immediate.  To change the airflow now, they must use touch screen controls.  First, they must go back to the main screen, then this submenu and that submenu until finally, they can give the command for the machine to change the flow of oxygen to the patient.   However, just as with the touch screen at the train station that sometimes will not read my fingers, there is always the possibility that the command wasn’t recognized.   Me, at the train station, will know it diddn’t take because I haven’t got my ticker, but how does the doctor know?  Do YOU want to have to wait this long for the air flow to you or a loved one to be corrected.  I do not.  Tough shite paddy.  These devices are most likely universally used throughout the so called “first world” now.  You and I have no choice, nor do the doctors who were against these replacing what worked just fine before.   If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Technological revenge.

Then we have the voting machines in the States and elsewhere.  Why?  What problem did we have before their use that we do not have after their use?  Many people were against them being used for the very problems we have seen.  To assuage these fears (That have now been realized.) we were told that the machines would NOT be hooked up to any outside network.  The only way to hack them would be to physically hack the closed network they were on or individual machines.  We were promised that chain of custody with serialized machines and matching memory devices would be used and strictly audited.  They lied.  Oh, I’m sure that for a few years this was true but it was not long until all the measure they assured us would be used to prevent this mess were done away with, as planned IMHO.   

I does not matter what we do or don’t want.  It does not matter what those who work with the systems being replaced with computerized and networked ones want or don’t want.  Not even medical doctors opinions on the matter mean a hill of beans.  Here are the new machines, use them or hit the highway.  I do not know but there is evidence that other professions have had this forced upon them too.  I know we teachers have.   This tech is being forced upon us against our wishes or through lies to gain our acceptance.  But why.

Next time, use of tech in our everyday financial life is not for your benefit.