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| Save time | 78% | 210 votes | Total: 270 votes | |
| Waste time | 22% | 60 votes |
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Add to FavoritesIf you have lived through or observed a bad experience caused by a computer glitch or user error, you may think technology can be a waste of time. Observing young people, families and professionals today, you might disagree as you see that more is getting done in less time. Access to the loads of technology available has allowed people to accomplish more things faster, be it to pack daily schedules, leverage resources for increased income, or to save time used to spend with family. The use of technology is the enabler for this burst in capacity and ability.
Family life, with its scheduling and budgeting needs, is one fair way to show the apparent affects technology has on our time. Consider a typical suburban family, the Smiths; a middle class family with two kids and a dog. A week day typically consists of waking up to breakfast, getting to school and work and then coming home. Well, consider a wrench thrown into this typical daily pattern. When mom was making lunches for the kids, she unwittingly dropped her work ID badge into one of the lunch boxes, and the kids were on the bus to school already. She was almost out the door when she realized the ID was missing and remembered the last thing she was doing. She digs out her cell phone and calls little Nancy. Check your lunch boxes for my ID badge. If you find it, leave it in the office at school on your way in. Crisis averted, and the time to check in the office and have little Nancy or Jimmy called up so you can check the boxes yourself was saved. Not to mention the potential time wasted with driving to school on a sure notion, only to find the ID was wedged in between the seat cushion in the car. All thanks to that wonderful technology, the cellular phone.
Now, consider the daily grind is done, and the evening wide open for some relaxation. That is, until Mr. Smith remembers the end of the month is near and he has to do the budget and pay bills. Flashback to 1970 and imagine the time consumed in writing expenses and dues down in a budget book or check register, reviewing bank and credit statements, and writing and mailing checks out. For a family of four (don't forget the dog), it can grow into a huge task to manage all of this considering the additional expenses that accumulate on top of typical household expenses; such as band, braces, vet and health care costs. Cancel any plans Mr. Smith, because you're booked for the next ninety minutes, minimum. Now, come back to 2009 and watch as Mr. Smith, a wiz at Excel and online banking sits down for about fifteen minutes and enters the income and expenses into his budget spreadsheet and then goes online and submits payments to creditors. It looks like he'll be finished in time to catch the game. Way to go, Mr. Smith! And thanks HP, Intel, Microsoft and Verizon for the mass produced technologies: PCs, micro processors, spreadsheet software and high-speed internet.
As time moves on in this new 21st century, technology seems to be changing and growing at exponential rates, while the gadgets themselves are shrinking; all the while it gives us more time to do what we do. Blackberry and Palms saving our minutes needed to review and mark calendars; virtual anywhere wireless internet saving us from having to call up the local theater for show times; automated register scanners saving plenty of time as we get our weeks worth of groceries; and let us not forget the hundreds upon hundreds of hours saved as we race around in our horseless carriages (that's automobiles for you newcomers). Technology may be the reason we fill our lives with so much, and may even provide ways to waste time, but there is no doubt that we are free to do more of what we want because of the conveniences provided by it. Saved time is cherished time these days, and technology makes it happen.
Learn more about this author, Ralph Mcallister.
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Waste time
Technology helps us waste time. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't get a rash of phone calls between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. in the evening using the automated questionnaires. I absolutely hate this! I live alone and I have to run to the phone to answer as it could be anyone in my family who are mostly elderly and I do concern myself with their welfare. Once I am connected to the phone via the wires I hear these automated voices and messages of distress about falling credit ratings and insurance policy and other such business related material. I wonder what kinds of business really think people are programmed to buy in this manner. Maybe the younger generation are but the older ones have questions to ask.
These automated time wasters are clearly defining society as a bunch of idiots who can no longer think for themselves and need to be told what and when and how to live life. I feel that who ever dreamed this situation up had to believe that people needed automation as a form of cattle proders for their ignorance. It is truly an insult to the integrity of the world at large.
One of the worse offenders of the situation is the phone companies. When ever one calls for any amount of information you get the automated voice on the other end that has to lead you literally through a maize of numbers and maybe you will be satisfied or not. Then ultimately you will press 0 and reach a real person. This person is one of the employees who has been living in another part of the world and has in fact learned English and speaks the language I am sure with the help of the computer and barely is understandable and the sentences have to be repeated so many times that there is no point in doing anything but hanging up and going back to what ever you were doing and feeling disatisfied.
Personal ly, I have wasted over 1hour or more with the phone companies trying to get to a destination where I can speak to a knowledgeable person to get the information that I need. At this point in my life I have fewer and fewer phone calls and wonder if I would benefit by not having a phone line at all and just use a cell phone for emergency out calls.
If time is so precious why can't one call a company and right away get a customer service representative and do business? The only company that I can, on a regular basis, where I get through to a representative is the Manulife Health Care service. I seem to call and get right through fast without confusion or frustration. That is a really big company and there are at least 1/3 of the population on that system so why isn't it plugged with automation?
The answer is obvious, it doesn't work as well as the human voice. The other companies are trying to express their "state of the art" progress and keep the younger generation employed when they could probable be doing better work elsewhere but have been bought into thinking that automation is the road of the future and the way everyone is doing things these days. Well not so and this is just a ploy to keep companies increasing their rates justifably.
There are places for automation but the human mind must come first or we won't have one left to create the automation.
Let's keep everything in moderatin and don't try to raise the blood pressure of your customers who are at the mercy of the phone companies and the computer companies. We need some companies who have conscientious and no nonsense employees.
We pay our taxes and our bills for a lot of harassement and wild goose chase via the systems that are supposed to benefit us but they do not.
The computer is also one of the worst time wasters we try to do something once and by the time we figure out just what we are to do the system has changed its' program and wiped out all your addresses or messages that you wanted to save or the family photo album or anything else of importance to yourself.
I have often said that Bill Gates and Albert Einstein have a lot in common. They were both highly intelligent individuals with simple life styles. They both invented something of value but they also both invented something that could wipe us out. The differnce between the two men is that Bill Gates had a very smart father who knew how to legally make his son filthy rich through the art of confusion and perpetual change! Both men have scared the world and drove us nuts.
Time to start thinking for ourselves once again and rethink where the value of life is. I hope you won't vote for automation as one could be on hold for ever.
Learn more about this author, Aria Quill.
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