What Happened to the Good Old Days?

How about when you go to the store during half time and the "system is down". No one can figure out how to ring up a simple sale. And you end up missing the play of the game!

I love technology, but we have to remember how to live without it.

I'm not going to wax philosphical about rotary dial phones, 8-track tape players, and the like. Technological advancement is generally a good thing. If it makes life safer or more convenient then I'm generally for it. Are there downsides? sure, but I'm happy with central air, indoor plumbing, electrical applicances, etc. Glad someone didn't decide that progress was bad and stop these items from being available.

Are we too reliant? That's a much different question. We have tools, we use them. We rely on them. Could I get by without a cellphone, a computer, a TV, sure, but just because I could survive without them doesn't mean I want to.

As a side note, I've had the same cellphone for 5 years and I see no reason to change just to keep up. I don't need a camera, Internet access, etc. on it. When I finally get sick of it i'll upgrade - but I won't do it kicking and screaming about how great my monocolor, must be charged every day to work, phone was.

I would generally agree with you .My inferance was why so quickly, as soon as one thing is in place it's quickly replaced .I still have a 20 yr old sony tv that works fine and I agree digital is better than analog .I think my point is change for the sake of change thats fractionally better .,but your point is made nobody is forceing us to buy anything .Except the cable company is insisting I'll need a box to recieve a signal soon but I'll wait till I have to , reception is fine .

'Except the cable company is insisting I'll need a box to recieve a signal soon';

It is actually the government requiring all TV broadcasts to be digital by late 2009. So you still have some time before you have to upgrade.

Yes, The cell phone is annoying, today's cell phones, the phone itself is secondary, you can't buy just a cell phone, who's idea was it to use a color LCD screen ? You can't see them in daylight. although very convenent, people call you for the smallest reasons. Remotes , I think my cable remote has more 30 buttons. I can't even read them. plus the 2 other remotes that go with it.

A word processor with punctuation, spelling and grammar checking would be a plus for you, ("simular observations or storys .Personally"). Word processors were not around in "the good old days" and those who did not receive schooling in these basics were marked by it in their writing skills until the day they were able to procure and use the word processor.

Maybe we really are better off with the help from this new technology.

Yeah, before word processors people knew how to spell.

Dependency is not a good thing, where the tools use us. We have to learn to use the tools.

Hey don't get me started. What ever happened to the idea of when everyone has an office PC we will have a paperless society take a look around your office.

How about, just when you learn some of the neat little things in your E-mail or purchasing system, some unseen person in the IT dept. changes from one brand name to another. This of course puts everyone in the company back to square one on the learning curve. How much time is lost as everyone has to learn how to do things all over again.

I have been in instrumentation for close to 30 years and some of the things that drive me nuts are how the newer the technology the faster it will be obsolete.

You can't treat your workplace like your home PC where if it is two years old it is ancient.

I see all too often where a project engineer uses the latest greatest device when a simple time proven method could do the job a lot simpler and cheaper.

A good example is a programable motor protection relay with the one inch thick manual, a hundred parameters and a hand held communicator all of which the techs will have to re-train themselves on when it fails. This installed on a ten horsepower water pump, why not use the old style relay with a knob on the cover just set it to one amp above the rating for the motor. This might seem crude by todays standards but this kind of set up has been used for decades.

In 1986 I saw my first fax machine installed in our engineering office and my boss said this was the beginning of the end. Until then we would send off some drawings and a letter (by courier, if we were in a hurry) and wait a week for a reply. Now, by using the fax machine, you could expect a reply within days, maybe hours. He said that this would not give people time to think before responding and most people could not make an accurate decision quickly. The decision cycle had been sped up to the point where a good decision was a 50-50 probability. The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? I think he was right. All engineering technology are just tools to aid you in your decision making processes. But not all are productive.

To add to this one for todays way in the schools....Just this past week one of my children was having some pomplications in his math class. The instructor had given them an entire sheet on graphing. Only to find out later that he had not been taught how to use the common math calculations that had been taught in the years gone by for complicated equations. I remember not having a calculator and having to rely on my knowledge of using a slide rule and actual formulas with the laws of physics that were burned into my brain by the first semester of school. Now the school had in its provisions, graphing calculators furnished for this class, but here is the catch, the instructor refused to allow the students access to these items in the class room.

The only access to these calcs, was only granted to those students who paid to rent them during the class session.....Now the wife is reigning fire and brimstone down upon the school and instructor for such an act of prefrential treatment.

So much for our taxes at work in the school systems. They screw you both ways.