??Technology = Improvement??

So today was a big waste of time. I recently received a letter saying that I needed to do something with my cell phone or I would loose my phone number and be dropped from having service. Sounds weird.

Well, many years ago I went to La Ward Cellular in Victoria to get Cingular service. We all know that Cingular then changed to AT&T and now La Ward Cellular has decided to split from AT&T and do their own thing so I needed to pick who I was going to go with or I would just be dropped from both.

I was told I could come in to the Victoria off ice and get it taken care of, the problem is that Victoria is now about 3 hours away from home. So after 2 phone calls lasting about 45 minutes total and 4 trips to AT&T stores totalling about 4 hours I now have cell phone service again.

So this leads me to my question.....Is advancing our technology really making things easier and better??

I know that usually things are a lot faster and more convenient with today's technology but when you look at today it is questionable. I spent several hours today to have a working phone, my parents had a land line phone at our house that was there for probably 30 years and I would bet that if you added up the entire 30 years they never spent 5 hours trying to make it work right.

When we were all growing up the teachers never believed that your dog ate your homework but now there is never a question when you claim that your computer crashed and could not finish a report.

How many things have you really had lost in the mail? Now, how many times has your email provider crashed or gone down for maintenance?

Have you had your car or your bicycle worked on more recently?

It also seems that the technology causes terrible mood swings. While trying to figure out things at the AT&T store today I saw at least 10 people come in and and become visibly upset that there were no iPhones available.

I'm not saying I'm going to give it all up and move into the mountains or anything, it is just something I had time to ponder while I was dealing with my cell phone.