Today I had quite the misadventure with my new phone. That's unfortunate, since it was in fact, my first day with my new phone. In trying to transfer my service from one phone to the other, I was left with neither phone working.
That's extra unfortunate, because it had seemed like such a modern process up until that point. I ordered the phone and the plan online, it was delivered quickly, and I went back online to activate it. Having to go to the store and ask questions seemed quite archaic.
The illusion of efficiency was further punctured when I got to the store and had to go through a series of have-you-tried-this and what-happened-when-you-did-this. To quote Dark Helmet, "Even in the future nothing works!"
And then the final revelation that we still live in backwards times: the phone started working as soon as it rebooted, with nothing else having changed. Yes, that remains the number-one way of fixing things. That, and take it apart and put it back together again. And occasionally, just hit it.
I'm not sure what paradigm I'd expect would be the universal way of repairing things in the future. In Star Trek, it's to wave a tricorder at it while saying something incomprehensible. But who knows, maybe the only thing the tricorder does is turn things off and on again.
So I'm wondering how many other things can be fixed by turning them off and on. Could the economy work that way? Maybe that's why they promote Buy Nothing Day. Or we could fix the U.S. by turning it off. Maybe that's what Trump has intended all along. But the big test is people who survive being clinically dead. They've actually been turned off and on, so I'm assuming that all their problems disappear.
No comments:
Post a Comment