The internet, and computers in general, seem to think we’re dumb. I say that because of the false information they routinely give. I was recently on a website run by a reputable *ahem* agency. It turns out that the information they gave me was incorrect. The next week when I went to check the status of my transaction, it said I couldn’t do so because cookies were blocked on my computer. Well, cookies aren’t blocked. I had to call said agency to ask about the status. I was then told that what I’d requested was valid “only during the pandemic” (excuse me, I thought we were still in a pandemic?) and that was the reason I couldn’t check the status online. That service was no longer available. So why did the auto-response blame it on cookies? I miss the generic “technical difficulties.” At least it was honest.
We’re all busy these days. Keeping websites up to date matters. It doesn’t help when some software person decides some techie-sounding excuse ought to satisfy you. Whenever I restart my computer, for example, I get a dialog box—it’s more of a monolog box, really, since it isn’t asking for anything but acknowledgement that its incorrect information has been delivered. In any case, it tells me that the computer decided to restart because of a problem. No it didn’t! It restarted because I gave the restart command! Is this a problem? I thought I was authorized to restart my own computer. Why is it lying to me? Is it colluding with the websites that are making up excuses?
Are we really that stupid? Computers seem to think so. On my work computer (PC, of course) you no longer have a trash can in which to discard old files. No, now we have a recycle bin. Recycle bin? Really? While I appreciate the message that we should recycle whatever we can, this is not a case of recycling at all. It is a matter of getting rid of something I no longer need. I guess what I’d like from our machine overlords is a bit of respect for our intelligence. Sure, we may be subject to biological constraints that don’t apply to the electronic world. We do have lapses in judgment just as surely as devices have bugs. A world that runs by algorithms alone is hardly a world in which we could live. So my devices may well be more logical than me, and if so they should figure out that they don’t need to lie or make excuses. Just say “technical difficulties,” I can live with that.
