Not sure where to begin with this, but there are areas where I dislike the proliferation of technology. I deal a lot with the elderly and, for those who have trouble adapting to change, technology is not always friendly.
I've never lived in a "new" house and I find that so many things these days must be plugged in or charged. Houses I've lived in didn't even have the necessary amounts of outlets to plug everything in that needed to be charged so things ended up with unsafe amounts of powerstrips and extension cords all over the place.
Telephones used to be one of the most reliable devices around. Power outage? No problem - telephone lines carried a safe & separate minimum electrical charge to keep phones working. Now all phones have to have batteries, they have to be charged, if they use a charger it has to be plugged in, if there's a power outage you can't charge your phone. Or you might have a house phone that works during an outage IF it's plugged into a modem and the modem has charged batteries - but cable companies give you modems with used batteries that often don't work and will charge you upwards of $80.00 to obtain new used batteries that often don't last long!
My mom keeps her cell phone next to her bed for emergencies. But she forgets it must be charged at least every couple days (she remembers that phones were plugged into the wall with one wire and they were always on). I've tried to explain that a dead cell phone will be of absolutely no use in an emergency.
Need a drill? Neighbor guy has the latest, most versatile, high-powered drill that does everything... BUT... oops, he forgot to charge the battery and it takes 8 hours to charge it. You've got the latest drill, you've got electricity, but you're completely out of luck because you don't have a hand drill or one with a power cord! (Or better yet, you're almost done with a job and the drill dies because the battery runs out of charge.)
I've never lived in a "new" house and I find that so many things these days must be plugged in or charged. Houses I've lived in didn't even have the necessary amounts of outlets to plug everything in that needed to be charged so things ended up with unsafe amounts of powerstrips and extension cords all over the place.
Telephones used to be one of the most reliable devices around. Power outage? No problem - telephone lines carried a safe & separate minimum electrical charge to keep phones working. Now all phones have to have batteries, they have to be charged, if they use a charger it has to be plugged in, if there's a power outage you can't charge your phone. Or you might have a house phone that works during an outage IF it's plugged into a modem and the modem has charged batteries - but cable companies give you modems with used batteries that often don't work and will charge you upwards of $80.00 to obtain new used batteries that often don't last long!
My mom keeps her cell phone next to her bed for emergencies. But she forgets it must be charged at least every couple days (she remembers that phones were plugged into the wall with one wire and they were always on). I've tried to explain that a dead cell phone will be of absolutely no use in an emergency.
Need a drill? Neighbor guy has the latest, most versatile, high-powered drill that does everything... BUT... oops, he forgot to charge the battery and it takes 8 hours to charge it. You've got the latest drill, you've got electricity, but you're completely out of luck because you don't have a hand drill or one with a power cord! (Or better yet, you're almost done with a job and the drill dies because the battery runs out of charge.)
Last edited by Captain Steel; 07-08-17 at 10:34 PM.