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I have a friend who owns one of those fancy universal remotes, one that costs more than I paid for my first television and comes with the distinction of being highly regarded by the techie web sites and magazines that shill for the electronics industry. The problem with the remote is that my friend has no idea how to make it work.
In desperation he has sought assistance from the research and science PhDs with whom he works and all of them admit they don’t have a clue either as to how to make this particular model work right. That these scientists and engineers who take great joy in competing to see who can possess the next neat technology toy cannot make a remote work is stunning testimony to the mess modern technology has created for us all.
Read the Manual–If You Can Understand Chinese
When in doubt, read the manual I tell my friend, but the last time I was over there he showed it to me. As thick as a small paperback it mingles simplistic diagrams with the equivalent of schematics most engineers would have trouble deciphering. One page had so many lines sticking out in so many directions it looked like a porcupine.
But the real challenge is trying to decipher the language. I swear all these manuals are written in some tiny country near Uzbekistan where the native tongue sounds like a vague combination of broken English, tech speak, some oriental language and Klingon. Although they can charge what amounts to a good part of my stimulus money for this fancy remote, they apparently cannot afford proof readers, because the typos and misspellings only make translating worse.
In my version of Dante’s Inferno, the executives who authorize this drivel will be condemned to forever having to read their own manuals so they can figure out how to program their remotes. Then they will truly find out that their remotes that “learn” are the technology equivalent of No Child Left Behind. Were the writers of these manuals to actually find themselves assigned to explaining something really meaningful like how to monitor a nuclear power plant, monitor an air traffic control device or, God forbid, the launch instructions for an ICBM and the world as we know it would disppear in a mushroom cloud.
There is always another solution if you can’t read the manual–find a fifth grader. That TV show where fifth graders put to shame the adult guests’ mastery of elementary school history, math and science is on to something because where fifth graders make adults feel really stupid is when it comes to mastering your cell phone or your computer.
But guess what, I tried the fifth grader test on this remote and the remote failed. It was not smarter than a fifth grader. In fact the fifth grader thought it was a pile of junk. She figured it had to have been designed by an adult.
Stand By Me
That retailers sell a device that the average consumer cannot use says a great deal about the decline of American business. Once retailers stood behind their products, but that old relationship has long since ceased to function.
Today when you go to the store you face the equivalent of the old shell game as to whether something will work or not. The public puts up with this because they have to, but as the empty boxes of Circuit City testify, the retailers moral bankruptcy can lead to real bankruptcy.
With incompetent salespeople and technologies too complicated for a consumer to figure out, it has opened the door for a whole new scam. Far from costing them money these new technologies have become an opportunity to charge even more. Enter the leeches from the Geek Squad.
Now it has become routine that after purchasing a new computer or home theater, consumers must pay even more to have some kid fresh out of high school to come to the house to hook everything up. They do this with just enough smoke and mirrors that you are ready to sign over your first child to them when they hand you the maintenance agreement.
Frankly this is intolerable. When you buy a new car you do not need a Car Squad to set it up for you so you can drive it. When you buy a refrigerator you do not need a Refrigerator Squad to explain how to make the icemaker work. These devices are deliberately made to function right out of the box even though they may sport a key pad as imposing as that of any remote or computer.
It’s My Fault
Why there has not been a general consumer revolt over this state of affairs is beyond me, but millions of Americans have willingly put up with this situation. They put up with it because in one of the greatest scams of modern times, manufacturers have convinced us that it is our fault.
Something unprecedented has happened with household technology that does not bode well for our future. Consumers have become convinced that because they cannot make something work the fault lies in their ignorance rather than poor design. I wager there is not an American who has bought a new computer or television who has not at some point become frustrated with making the darned thing work.
Instead of taking it back to the store and demanding their money back people put up with it in part because if they do take it back some wise-ass kid will push buttons at warp speed and make it work, intentionally making your feel like an idiot. They will rub it in by adding, “No one else has this problem.” I am convinced they go through acting school to porperly deliver these lines.
A Society of Tech Slaves
A society in which people cannot make their remotes work is a society of tech slaves at the mercy of manufacturers and retailers. This engenders a certain helplessness and dependency in people, neither of which is desirable in a democracy. Unable to make even the devices in our own homes work satisfactorily, we feel a loss of control over even the most intimate parts of our lives.
Advertisers, of course, have always`wanted us to feel inadequate so they can sell us products that will enhance our self-esteem, but with technology they seem to be deliberately manufacturing products that enhance our helplessness. The long-term consequences of this are impossible to predict, but lead to some interesting speculations. One thing for certain, the mythical Yankee tinkerer who loomed so large in the nineteenth century is dead.
Over a century ago Ralph Waldo Emerson warned of just such a dependency in his essay “Self Reliance:”
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of the muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue.
For Emerson that dependency encouraged a conformity which he regarded as the “foolish hobgoblin of little minds.” But no one writes any more of self-reliance because it has faded from memory, a slave to buttons and keyboards. From a systems point of view the feedbacks in this relationship do not bode well.
Where in Emerson’s time the average person could fix just about anything around the house, today it has become almost impossible to tell if something does not work because you did not understand the manual or because it really is defective. This in turn has two systemic impacts. First, it encourages manufacturers to make devices even more complicated. Second, it encourages shoddy workmanship.
Neither promotes a healthy economy. From a systems point of view that remote no one can operate is indirectly responsible at least in part for our current depression. Goods that do not work or require a PhD in engineering drive consumers from the market and we all know what that causes.
Circuit City is a classic case. When I visited their “liquidation sale” by far the largest number of items still left were complex pieces of technology, particularly those big screen televisions and home theater receivers. Now clearly price was a factor in these remaining in the store, but I have a theory that Circuit City in part went down because the technology scam finally caught up with it.
Some Horror Stories
As someone who frequently is on call to fix neighbors’ and friends’ technologies let me relate a few horrow stories.
One boigh a new printer that would nto work. After much frustration we found it this major manufacturer sold the printer without having Windows Vista drivers ready for it.
Another was talked into paying $50 extra for an HMDI cable he did not need and that did not work with his TV.
A third went through five cable boxes before finally getting one that worked.
A fourth was talked into buying a complex all-in-one printer whose instructions were so complicated he could not figure out how to work the scanner or fax.
A fifth was sold a TV that supposedly was digital but does not work. The store refused to take it back saying “digital” meant it would work with a cable or satellite box.
A sixth thought he bought a backup program but could not find the backups anywhere on his computer. Turns out the so-called backup program was a trial version so that in order to properly do backups he needed to buy another program.
Each one of these stories represents a consumer who did not get what they paid for. When you donlt get what you paid for you quit paying. When people quit paqying you have a recession.
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