I have a recurring nightmare. Usually, it has to do with a smart phone. The scenario varies but in all of them, I need to make a phone call and I cannot. The Icons on the display are different from what I am used to. Whenever I tap an icon I don’t get anything I can use, just an advertisement, a movie preview, or just a confused mess of images. For some reason I need to make a call urgently but find that my phone is useless for that. In one dream I try successive technologies starting with the old fashioned phone with the separate earpiece, next rotary dial, next push button, next cell, then the smart phone. None work. I relive the pain and frustration in everyday life whenever I need to contact customer service, or set up a WordPress blog.
Recently on a trip to my hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul I encountered a dear old friend who spent her career as a hospital unit clerk for something like 50 years. That is, she saw the transition in health care from paper charts to electronic charts. That came late in the game. There was a lot of resistance from some of the older MDs, but it came. It started with labs, which lends itself to the digital approach, then, only recently, it took over all charting. It has been a mixed blessing, naturally. Computer systems tend to go down at inconvenient times. They don’t do well with trauma or other emergency charting since selecting menu items on an application takes critical time away from the procedure at hand. Not only that, but medical institutions also like to buy the cheapest software they can find, which is usually way less user friendly than your average web page. Hospitals I’ve worked at almost always retain some program from 40 or more years ago, for some function like incident reporting, that require detailed instructions to use, are nearly impossible to correct, and in there use are like programing a VCR.
This woman only owns a flip phone. She has sworn off computers, almost entirely. I fully understand why anyone would feel that way, given what I’ve just told you. I don’t think she’ll be reading this blog. My frustration with computers is real, but my aversion to stacks and stacks of paper is greater, so it’s the lesser of two evils for me.