Just Say No to Tech-NO-logy

I am a cynic of sorts. I think it's the result of life experiences. Nowhere is this more apparent that in the field of technology. When is enough too much?

It all started when I was in college in the early 80's. I took a course in FORTRAN. Basically, it was an early introduction to computer programming. Back then computers were on the threshold of bursting into all of our lives. I had no idea what to expect but I studied really hard. For our final project we had to write a computer program including two unknowns and the results. I picked the topic of windchill. Both temperature and windspeed create different windchill temperatures. I wrote the program carefully trying over and over to create the perfect result. In the end it worked beautifully. After hours of work all one had to do was input the temperature and the wind velocity and the resulting windchill would appear. Wow! What a timesaver! I received a great grade. Now I see how all of this insanity began.

Isn't it just easier to make a graph of temperature and wind velocity? All you would have to to is look at the resulting windchill temperature on the graph and you're done. There's no going to the computer and waiting for it to warm up. There's no internet exploring to find a windchill program. There are no pop-ups showing how you can win millions while waiting for the graph to appear. It's really cool knowing how to get this information on your computer, but do we realize all the time it's taking? It's quite silly if you ask me.

A few years ago we bought my brother-in-law a Palm Pilot. We watched carefully as he input all of his information into that tiny machine. He had already learned the special alphabet that made input so much easier and, being a tech expert, it didn't take long for him to get it done. He showed us everything that could be done on that Palm Pilot. You could do calculations making it easier to do those nasty equations that we have to do. You could look at your calendar and see what appointments you had. This thing was SO AMAZING! Several months later I went out and bought one for myself for my birthday.

I started by inputting all of my friends' addresses. It took forever using the tiny keyboard screen and puny plastic writing thing-a-ma-jig. I hadn't yet learned the alphabet so it probably took me longer than a Palm Pilot expert.

By the time I had done all of this work I was burned out. It took me several weeks before I began inputting all of my upcoming appointments on the calendar. Again I spent quite a bit more time on this than I expected.

The Palm Pilot had a charging dock so there was no need to replace batteries. How convenient!! Unfortunately I put the little pain in the donkey in the dock the wrong way. The leads didn't touch and I only realized this after a few days. When I turned it on, there was nothing. There was no trace of all the information I had so carefully entered.

Now I know that just using an address book and a wall calendar works just as well. Simple calculations are much easier to do on paper than pulling this thing out and hoping you input the right numbers. Needless to say this 'thing' is now in my drawer; a reminder of my lost effort of trying to be techno-savvy.

Fast forward several more years. I wanted a laptop computer so I could do our finances in Quicken. I knew that having all our financial information in one program could get a quicker snapshot of where we stood.

After the installation of the program I began to study it. The program showed me how to import information from my bank or credit union. What a time saver! The push of a button would give me everything I needed to analyze our financial situation. I pulled up the list of participating banks and credit unions that were able to send this information.

Our credit union wasn't there. Bummer.

I had to manually input all of our transactions. Instead of a time saver, it was a time waster. I could have easily just looked at our register on our credit union's web page to see what our balances were. However I bravely continued to input every single transaction so the program could calculate our finances.

All the program did was spit back all the information I put into it in different graphs. I could have done that on paper.

Finally, our credit union came into the new millenium. All I had to to was put our user name and password into the program and our information would magically appear on the screen. Unbelievable! Not only that, but it would categorize each payee so we could see the data on each area of spending. It would show gas costs, groceries, clothing, doctor co-pays and water bills to name a few.

The first time I downloaded all of our information, I quickly went to the graph analysis to see where we were spending.

To my surprise we were withdrawing from the ATM the most. This was quite strange since we might take out $20.00 once or twice a month. I went back to the check register. The program magically assigned categories to each payee and I found that most of them were wrong. I then went back to the beginning of the register and fixed each transaction category to show where it was supposed to be. After an hour of tedious work I was done. My graph was much more accurate.

The next time I downloaded our bank info there was more erroneous information. The grocery store was showing 'gifts given'. The gas station showed 'groceries'. Frustrated, I waited until my brother-in-law came back into town.

I asked him to show me how to fix this problem. He went into the program and tried to show me. He didn't have much time so I tried to concentrate on what he was doing. When he left I had no idea what he did.

As I was walking in the woods today at lunchtime I realized that the old fashioned budget book I had at home with the hand-written entries might be the answer. The hours I had spent trying to make things easier did the exact opposite.

I'm used to the fact that I will never embrace all the technologies that are available. It seems that new things keep being introduced not to make our lives easier but rather to increase the revenue of the companies that make them. Cynical? Yes, of course. But I know that these corporations have to survive and making these things look cool brings in the bucks.

I like the idea of paper and pens. These can't be lost in cyberspace although I lose things in house-space too. I only know that it works for me. I spend much less time in front of the computer now getting nowhere. It frees up my time to do other things that have been neglected such as raising my children.

This technology has made us rely on a little machine instead of ourselves. There are lots and lots of people that will disagree with me but in the end I'm sure I spend much less time on the computer than they do. And my spreadsheets won't disappear.

I was born in the wrong century.