Technology Has Ruined All The Cool Stuff Rant

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By Charles Richard Walker

I would trade all the benefits (outside of medical) that our current world of technology rewards us with and go back to flip phones, Blackberries, and beepers in an instant if I could. Technology has made my life more aggravating. These tech bros destroy every experience they get their hands on. They have ruined the experience of watching television. I am so tired of endless signing in to this TV or that app over and over again, and now the new wonder of the world: the two-step verification process. I am tired of proving I am a human. I don’t want to solve your puzzle to prove I have blood rushing through my veins. I don’t want this kind of TV experience.

You can keep your GPS; I know how to read a map. You can keep YouTube, which I thought was cool until I move my phone and it shoots me to another video and then makes me believe that what I was watching just a millisecond ago was never there. It puts me on a mission to go find Waldo when all I wanted to do was listen to a Triumph song. Record players, cassettes, and CDs were just better. How much of our year is taken up with us signing in, waiting for the spinning circle to end, or connecting my phone to my TV with a QR code? It all just sucks. They have eviscerated everything that brought me joy.

A car is not a car anymore. I used to say it was a computer on wheels, but now Florida this year is testing flying cars that go back and forth from Tampa to Orlando. So, I don’t know what a car is anymore. I found out those cars fly on batteries, batteries! I was weed-eating this weekend around my home, and the battery died. Glad I was not 200 feet in the air. I am not a Luddite. I have a black belt in bending artificial intelligence to my will, but I would give it up in an instant and go back to the Dewey Decimal System and the quiet of the library just to find my peace of mind.

The first company that makes a TV that you do not have to sign into will change the world. The first company to make a car made out of steel with no computer in it will change the world. If Apple brought back the iPod, they could change the world once again. I can go on and on; it is bizarre that changing the world for the better now means going backwards. My mother bought me a robot to clean my floors; it keeps getting stuck in the same place over and over. I threw it in the trash and grabbed a broom. Imagine if you lived in one of these countries that are being bombed by drones constantly. I hear that people stay indoors on a sunny day and come out when it is cloudy or rainy because the drones don’t fly. Put aside whether or not you believe that anybody should be droned to death, and realize one thing. The tech bros and gals even ruined a sunny day.