The Zen of Technology

I launched a new computer yesterday. It is a shiny new laptop.  I used the verb launch because there are now as many steps in getting a computer up and running as there seems to be getting a rocket launched into space, or a battleship out to sea or a transcontinental jetliner off the ground for her maiden voyage. All the moving pieces and the software and the things that must come from the old computer to the new one and it must happen in a prescribed order, which, ironically they forgot to mention in the oh-so-brief text of the user manual.

My gosh it is endless.

And they haven’t made it easy at all.

Old plugs don’t fit into new computers’ sockets, and there all kinds of incompatibility issues.  My camera won’t download every time and the printer– well you get the idea.

That’s why today’s blog is a rant.

I hate technology. While it does many wonderful things for us and for society, I still distrust it and dislike it and therefore will dis it as often as I can.

Yesterday I saw a group of workers sitting for lunch in the front yard of a home where they were digging a new plumbing line.  Not exactly high tech work; but they had rigged a microwave oven to their portable power supply and were enjoying a hot lunch thanks to the technology of radio waves focused onto small amounts of surface area.

I thought to myself, well, they can’t start a fire and cook their beans and tortillas there, the city would complain about an open flame, so they’ve done the next best thing.  They’re microwaving their lunch in the front yard. Ingenious. 

I returned home from my bike ride, after seeing the workers and the outdoor microwave oven, and decided to brew a hot cup of coffee.  The power went out.  No power–no coffee. Technology bites.

Maybe some of us are meant to type on underwood upright typewriters. Perhaps others of us are meant to shoot film in our cameras.  Still others of us use the postal service to actually mail letters, real honest-to-God paper letters with stamps.

But I try not to live in the past.  I am truly giving technology a chance. Even though this computer thing has me pulling my hair out. By tomorrow, the kinks will be worked out and the computer will feel like an old friend. Until my Word or Excel or my iPhoto refuses load properly.

Then I’ll cuss and blame it on technology, when in reality I know it is just bad karma.

The Zen master was right. “No matter how hard you try, you’re gonna get it in the shorts.” And he was an optimist.