Thursday, March 16, 2017

Why has life got so complicated?

There are times when I would really like to do things the simple way. Things like watching tv has become such a challenge for some people now. The basic turning on the television and selecting the station to watch isn't available anymore. The remote is no longer simple thanks to all the new features that are available we think some of the channels now. Sure for some of the younger generation the new remotes may make sense but to the older generation it can be a challenge. A remote is now something that has intelligence built in until the system changes and that intelligence is now out of date.

I am talking about the television remotes because we recently had to help my parents with an issue with their cable. What ends up being the issue was my dad decided to try and resolve the problem himself instead of just asking for help. The fit he tried was to use some documentation for the remote that came with the tv before cable was on a digital box. Now the fit that he did meant they couldn't get any channel and the picture was larger than the actual tv screen because this was zoomed by 25%. So no wonder the tv wasn't working because the remote function had changed and the written instructions were outdated. The written instructions were torn up and removed to ensure they couldn't be used again.

I think so many things that we do now are a lot more complicated than when I was younger. Cars now have lots of screens and difference devices to assist you in parking and checking your blind spots and even driving the car for you to ensure you are not in an accident. These features do sound wonderful inside ways until there is an issue with one of these features. Imagine going on a driving vacation using all of these great features only for one of them to malfunction. The car that could do everything from you without you having to think about anything now doesn't work and you no longer know how to get places and are stuck. Yes, the simple skill of basic driving may become something that people don't know how to do because the car will do it for them and the driver becomes a passenger in a vehicle.

The simple skills that some of us grew up knowing are going away. Student are no longer learning how to write because everything is now done on either a computer, tablet, or mobile device. Students are no longer required to write out sentences by hand now they just enter everything on a device. Students are even learning how to spell like we did because the computer now has spell check to help with spelling or at least it tries to help until "auto correct" decides to enter a word that isn't what was meant. Math is something else that isn't being taught but like it was because all the cash registers and computers will give you the answer when it comes to providing change for a purchase. Good luck getting change when the system is programmed wrong or it just doesn't work or the person enters what you gave them incorrectly.

Maybe people think these different methods are making our life simpler but really it is making it that people no longer have to think and rationalize things. I would really like to have some things back to being simple and then let me decide what I want assistance with.

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