Blogtrek

Gadgets

One thing that makes the world of the early 2000's different from the 1950's or earlier is the large number of gadgets that are available to make life easier. From when I was a child until now, they include television, washing machines, addiators, slide rules, calculators, compact discs, back teller machines, computers, VCRs, cellular phones, GPS devices, and PDAs, plus plenty of others. But do they all help? Take cellular phones, for instance. Each cellular phone has its own buttons on it; there is no standard. On one I looked at today, you turn it on by pressing END. That's right, you begin at the END. Whoever came up with that one? Evidently someone who feels the END is near came up with that one. I asked about analog service. They started talking about roaming. Since when does analog have anything to do with roaming?

Then of course there is the strength of signals. You have to have cellular phone towers nearby or you get no service. Cellular phones are a hot item in communities; many communities don't want them. OK, then, they don't get cellular phone service. That's NIMBY in action. The place becomes a black hole. Many other communities want the service but don't want unsightly towers, so guess what? They put cellular phone tower equipment on flag poles, trees (although these trees look a little odd), water towers, and other naturally and artificially-occurring high objects. What I found strange was that an old 1997 or so vintage analog cellular phone got better reception than a modern 21st century one with digital service.

I can go on like this about cellular phones or about other devices. Did you know that you activate voice mail at work by using call forwarding? That to me is like forwarding calls to the washingmachine - it does not make sense. I can also expand upon the unintuitivies of other gadgets in our age. It is not the gadgets' fault. It's the fault of those that make them. Someone out there thinks that END means turn on, that "system" means quit (Radio Shack Basic), that a fax is a special kind of printer (I'd like to print you something) and so forth. It's time the gadget manufacturers start making sense on these machines.