A Contributor’s Carrot is Grated

I recently got given a new laptop as a birthday gift – one of the best gifts ever.

My previous lap top was about three years old (in computer years that’s about 60 – they’re worse than dogs) and it sounded like it was powering a nuclear submarine. It didn’t even have Bluetooth or a DVD-writer. Needless to say, then, that I am absolutely over the moon with my snazzy new 21.6ghz, 15 inch lap top, this baby even has Wireless – I’ve been strolling around the house like Florence Nightingale trying to find an unsecured network to tap into but without any avail.

All was well in the land of quiet laptops until about a day or so ago when I switched off the swanky new piece of machinery and noticed that it was busy installing some or other upgrade. While I was rather irked that I was never asked whether I want this update or not (I’m on one of those 3G contracts so the mobile ISP might as well come and take my kidney as a down payment on my account) but why is it not shutting down when I am in a rush to get out of the house?

I decided to ignore this, kind of like you do when your newly acquired significant other first does something which annoys you, but this trend started to continue. Since this first started – every time I switch off my computer, some or other new update is installing. I bet a few techies out there will quickly tell me how to correct this but for the semi-rookie, this is a main in the bum.

I know of numerous people who have the same issue and, despite turning the Automatic Windows Updates off, for some reason something is still always installing. This phenomenon is akin to your best mate dragging that annoying boyfriend or girlfriend along wherever you go – and whatever he or she does makes you want to scream.

It got me thinking that software programmers must be a bunch of sadistic folk. I am pretty sure that they take great joy in programming something knowing that it’s automatic update feature will grate somebody’s carrot for at least one week out of a month. How many service packs, updates, plug ins, and additional crap do you have to install before your programs actually work properly? I might be way paranoid but it sometimes feels that technology was invented with the sole purpose of trying to annoy me.

Things were better back in the day. Nokia 3310s were water and bulletproof. MS DOS had all the mathematical programmes you needed to develop your brain, dail-up allowed you to stay in touch with your relatives far away and Encarta had all the information you needed to research your school project.

The internet, and technology, has come a long way. It’s made our lives simpler in many ways but has it all become too  much to handle? How many of us still know what a post office looks like or what ink even smells like?

Maybe they’re not sadistic after all. Maybe they’re trying to keep us from losing our humanity.