Technology today

I came into work this morning and found that our Outlook was down. No one could login.

Talk about panic! I knew I had a meeting today at mid-morning but didn’t know which project it was about, where it was, or what time. I couldn’t get to my email, and I couldn’t look up phone numbers for my co-workers. Now take my panic level and multiply it by everyone on my floor. It was not a pretty morning, stress levels were on overload. The morning loss was followed by two other losses that didn’t last as long.

The level of stress we experienced made me think that we're due for introduction of a new medical diagnosis of a condition brought on by the loss of everyday technology, causing acute anxiety and the inablility to function and interact with ones environment. It will be called Technology Obsession Stress Syndrome, or TOSS for short.

Now my working career started before we had desktop computers. I got to thinking about how I did the same kinds of things before I had a computer and all the handy applications I have now. First of all I remembered a lot of phone numbers and even addresses. (Something I don’t even try to do now because it’s just a waste of time.) For those I couldn’t remember I had them written down, or I had directories I could use to look them up. There was not cut and paste function, so you would have to re-type things, or do some vague writing and then do some fancy copy machine work which constituted mail merge before Word and Excel.

I, like many others my age, am in possession of a great store of knowledge that is now obsolete. For instance I can use a rotary dial phone, a memo graph machine, a typewriter, a record player, and rabbit ears. I know how to check an old glass TV tube and replace it, as well as a fuse in a fuse box. I can even use a CB radio. Once I even knew how to use a slide rule. I know, ohmygawd!!

I was watching Apollo 13 the other day and there were several things in there that struck me. Of course the fact that they were using slide rules, that just seemed frightening that they were trusting important calculation to two sticks. Also everyone was smoking right at their work stations, how about the workstations? The TV sets were those big console units and the shows were in black and white. No one had a remote control, they had to walk over to the TV and turn the dial.

Star Trek, the original, is also notable for all the toggle switches and indicator lights. I mean this was cutting edge stuff. As a kid we were blown away by the possibilities for technology in the future. Now that we’re in future it seems corny.

It’s crazy to think of all that science has accomplished in my life time. It makes me wonder what is yet to come, and what stresses we’ll have when it goes down. We really are almost held hostage by our reliance on it all. I think we should institute a new annual holiday where we can use only technology that existed before 1950. Can you imagine?? We'll call it Black Hole Day, or Time Tunnel Day.