No, William, there’s no such thing as better living through technology
Dear William Hatfield: You once said, “Better living through technology” and I have never forgiven you for that.
William, have you seen my hair lately? It’s all white. I look like I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the ghost of Donald Trump standing by my bedside and … oh, wait. Donald Trump isn’t ghost-adjacent, at least not yet.
William, maybe technology works for you, but for me, Lieutenant Col. Luddite, it’s like screaming at the AI-generated phone tree ’bot that asks, “Do you want to speak to a customer service representative?” to which I respond, “YES! YES! For the 10,653rd time, YES!” and then the ’bot chirps, “Let me transfer you to a new automated menu!”
Not gray hair, William. White hair.
I decided to take your advice and apply the “better living through technology” ideology to my bill-paying. Every month I sat down with a pile of bills – gas, electric, phone, water, TV, internet – and dutifully wrote my paper checks, even balancing my checkbook the old-fashioned way, because all the crossword puzzles, Wheel of Fortune and Prevagen was not helping this withered, atrophied old brain. And then I dutifully deposited these written-on-paper checks in their stamped envelopes and dropped them in that good old-fashioned mailbox, where they were promptly dumped in a wooded area by a disgruntled postal worker taking a stand against “the man.”
So I thought: “Wouldn’t it be easier if these bills were paid directly from my checking account?” Actually, no, it would NOT be easier, but I was determined to live better through technology, so I dove into the world of “auto pay.” Not “bill pay.” They may both have something to do with banks, but auto pay is as different from bill pay as I am different from Timothee Chalamet. We may both be males, but I think it’s a safe bet he does better on the dating apps than I.
So I set up my bills to be paid automatically from my checking account and for the most part it was a pain-free process, except in one case the utility “forgot” my account and started sending me paper bills again, and I expect my water to be cut off any day now from non-payment because I haven’t seen an email from them in weeks.
Next came the credit card bills. Cue the music from “Jaws.”
I have two credit cards. One gives me cash back. The other gives me points I can use at Amazon – and I better not get any grief for shopping at Amazon. I would LOVE to shop at a local business, or even a not-local business. But everybody is so busy living better through technology that they shop online, which in retail terms means Fort Walton Beach has the same beachfront acreage as the Gobi Desert. I HAVE to shop at Amazon.
The first credit card was a simple, 5-minute process. The second? It reminded me of the Apollo 13 mission. “Complex” doesn’t begin to describe. “Infuriating,” “frustrating,” “unintuitive” or even “turning your hair from gray to white” are the words that come to mind.
It was a THREE-DAY process. It involved multiple calls to the bank’s 800 number. A trip to the bank, where the customer service representative tried to tell me (a) it would be easier to set it up from my host bank than THEIR bank because THEIR bank had an antiquated computer system that didn’t like other computer systems. Their computer system IS antiquated. It reminds me of the computer system in place when I started working at the Playgound Daily News in 1979 (Yes, William, I know you weren’t even born in 1979, but trust me. We had a computer system at the newspaper back then. I think there were gerbils in the operating system.) Then (b) she tried to tell me their website had all the answers to my questions (I am shaking my head “no” and smiling ruefully).
So she and I got on the phone with their bank’s “customer service” representatives and even SHE could not get the right information. We were transferred, put on hold, listened to some really awful hold music, and it was not until we were connected with a department that had NOTHING to do with my request that we finally got some resolution.
But wait, we weren’t done. Oh no, there was more. They had to send some test deposits to my account, then make a test withdrawal. After that, I had to re-enter the digital version of Mordor and request some kind of epay ca-ca, verify my checking account (the one they just sent the tests to), then tell it how much to pay every month, plus when to pay.
Three days, William! Three days I’ve been working this problem. And now that it’s over I feel like I should be handed some kind of an award, you know, like a Medal of Persistence with Just for Men clusters.
And guess what? That credit card expires next year. I may have to go through this ALL. OVER. AGAIN.
Next time I’m calling you. You can handle it. Your hair isn’t white – last time I saw it, anyway. I’m digging this “getting old and being helpless” thing.
OK, time for me to go. There’s a warm cup of milk and some Metamucil calling my name. Don’t call or text me, William, because the phone will be in the other room, on the charger. You know how we old farts are.
Every now and again we like to take a break from the benefits of technology.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Better living through technology? Sure, when it works.
But more and more I see technology becoming a dehumanizing influence on our lives, requiring that we spend more and more of our discretionary time on meeting the demands of the digital beast, abetted by a corporate mentality that favors money over all else.
A month ago I noticed my mobile phone bill had gone up by $5. I called the company to ask why and was given every answer but the real one – because they wanted more money. But they offered to switch me to a different plan, one that would do away with my ability to use my phone as a hotspot but would cost $10 a month less. I told them to do it.
Cut to yesterday. I receive a text message that says the mobile phone service provider is charging X number of dollars to my credit card. The amount is the same as the previous month.
So I spend a big chunk of this morning getting to the bottom of the problem, which appears to be that my new plan didn’t “take,” whatever that means.
This comes on the heel of a slew of automated text messages from medical entities wanting me to pay my bills – in one case I had already paid the bill and in the other, it’s set up to automatically bill to my credit card. And let’s not talk about the $5,000 error made by the hospital, which has yet to be resolved.
Technology is fine. But in the hands of corporations that don’t give a damn about anything except money, it has become a thing of evil. It has two imperatives: the alleged convenience it provides to us, the customer, which is debatable; and second, the benefit nobody talks about – reduced corporate costs, i.e., higher profits.
The corporate scramble for lower costs and higher profits has cheapened all our lives. A significant portion of the inflation we see today is the result of corporate profiteering. Their cost-cutting measures, with the transfer of work to the customer, have made our lives more stressful and less rewarding, especially at the hands of a quixotic technology base.
Orwell tells us that government is Big Brother. No. George got it wrong. Corporate America is Big Brother. Government is only the Drunk Uncle.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
In this photo the author (right) explains to visitors how the newspaper is assembled during an open house. Photo courtesy of the Daily News.
Very soon, the Daily News will abandon its old, proprietary computer system for a brand new, PC-based computer system.
With this change, we will move up a notch in the high-technology race that seemingly shifted into high gear during the 1980s and has yet to slow down. Every week, we hear about a new gadget or application that offers to make our lives better.
In some cases, these gadgets actually do make life better. I can’t imagine a world without CAT scanners, or even cordless telephones.
But it also seems increasingly true that these gadgets have evolved to such absurd levels of complexity that they no longer serve the people they were intended to help. In fact, they’ve become an end unto themselves.
This fact was driven home to me last week as we began to learn about our new computers and software.
They are amazing machines. They do most anything, and they do it three or four different ways: They check your spelling, check your grammar, play your CDs, fax your files, surf the web and answer your questions.
Therein lies the problem: They are a little too amazing.
They do too much.
It’s normal to feel a little overwhelmed when learning an unfamiliar and complicated new skill. But I’m not unfamiliar with these machines, and I’m not a computer Luddite. Yet I am most definitely swooning over the sheer volume of … “stuff” on these machines … and the intricacy of its use.
The computer industry is especially guilty of overcomplicating what should be simple procedures. This overcomplication exists on every level of the computer experience, from the insane number of ways any one command can be executed, down to even the muddy syntax of the “documentation” (computerese for “instruction manual”).
But this overcomplication extends to much of the high technology we are told we need: telephones with so many features that they cannot be deciphered; kitchen appliances that require so much programming to do something that it would be easier to do it by hand; VCRs all across America that blink 12:00; the endless parade of digital cell phones, analog cell phones, pagers, check-writers, electronic games, CD players, DVD, HDTV, LD and DCS. …
I feel like one of the robotic workers in Fritz Lang’s science fiction classics “Metropolis.”
Our purpose is no longer to use these machines to accomplish a task, but to make the machines do everything they are capable of doing.
People are starting to rebel.
The “nesting” phenomenon of the early to mid-’90s was an opening shot in our War of Rejection against this insane spiral of technology. The stress of attempting to cope became too much for some people, who chose to hide out and decompress rather than hurl themselves into the clicking, beeping fray.
These days, the move to lead simple lives manifests our desire for the serenity we enjoyed when people, not machines, were more important.
When our computers are installed, I will try to learn the fastest, easiest and most direct ways to do my work. The rest will stay in the “documentation” – there if I need it, I suppose, but out of sight and, with any luck, out of mind.
This column was originally published in the Wednesday, May 27, 1998 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Damage in the Fort Walton Beach, Florida area caused by Hurricane Opal, which struck on Oct. 3, 1995. Image by Del Stone Jr.
On Aug. 5, 1995, and again on Oct. 3, 1995, something strange and wonderful happened in Fort Walton Beach.
Hurricanes Erin and Opal had roared through the days before. The town was in a shambles – trees down, boats sunk, houses destroyed.
People were busy restoring order. They helped themselves and they helped each other – but that’s not the strange and wonderful part.
Electrical service was out in most areas, which meant there was no air-conditioning, and no television. People were forced to go outside where – gasp! – they bumped into their neighbors.
Conversations began. Visits commenced. Cookouts ensued. Neighborhoods, in the truest sense of the word, sprang up literally overnight.
But more was happening. Information was exchanged. Values were formed and shared. Communication skills were honed. The compromises and adjustments demanded by coexistence were composed. The bonds of community and commonality were forged – in a single day!
How strange and wonderful. All the qualities that define the experience of communal man were emerging from the gloom of dead air-conditioners and TV sets.
Sadly, this reconnecting with our humanity ended abruptly when electricity was restored and people could go back to their cool, dark, television-illuminated homes.
Such is the power of air conditioning. But the larger draw is television, what family counselor and syndicated columnist John Rosemond calls the biggest threat to family cohesion ever. Rosemond correctly describes the behavior of watching television as a solitary and isolating act that separates people.
And that’s a relatively benign part of the process – what’s worse is this: The act of watching television is passive, an anesthesia for cognition, essentially transforming the brain into Jell-O.
Now, the internet looms as televisions evil progeny, a final desocializing technology that threatens to finish what writer Harlan Ellison’s “glass teat” started, to keep us all separated from any meaningful or realistic interaction with one another.
Never mind the deleterious health effects brought about by sitting on your butt all day, staring at a cathode ray tube. The Mass Mind behind the internet offers something even the fizzy brain candy of television cannot: the illusion of participating in a big, happy family.
Net proponents envision a global web of interconnectedness, where everybody and everything is equal – children, Nobel laureates, serial killers, rock stars – a global family to occupy the quaint global village we will become.
What they don’t mention is the fact that this “global village” isn’t real.
It’s a fantasy, an electronic simulation, a substitute for corporeality where people “interact” through a filter of anonymity, which allows for all manner of strange perceptions and behaviors. Reality is as elastic as your processor and modem will allow.
Is that we are stampeding to achieve? The cultural psychosis of leading pseudo-lives in an ersatz world, where reality unfolds around us, unnoticed and untended?
Next, I’d like to talk about the future of the net, and why YOU should tune out and turn off, right now.
Until the next hurricane. …
The column was published in the Northwest Florida Daily News on October 30, 1996 and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .