I don’t often get so frustrated with technology. My retirement promise to myself, this is before I used a cell phone for personal use, was to maximize my use of technology when it made sense to improve my life. Then ignore the rest.

I’ve had a struggle with technology over the last few weeks. It seemed as if it had it in for me. Everything seemed to be failing me. Let me give you a few examples.

With my new-to-me 10-year-old car, I was setting up the audio so that we could play music through the car speakers. Technology has advanced since my old car, so I needed new cables and adapters. I purchased a Bluetooth receiver to connect to the AUX port, as the vehicle did not have a built-in Bluetooth feature. I bought a new plug for the cigarette light and a new cable so I could continuously charge the phone while travelling on long road trips.

I sat in the car in my driveway, turned on the motor and managed to play Spotify on my phone. The music was transmitted to the Bluetooth receiver, and then the sound came out of the car speakers. The radio volume on the dashboard controlled the volume. Perfection.

I did some stop/start shopping for the next hour, and everything worked as expected. Then, when the 3-hour road trip began, it failed after about 30 minutes into the trip. I had no idea why, and after an unsuccessful stop to fix it, we settled on music through the phone.

I had set up the ‘Here we Go’ navigation app, which I’ve used for many years, with our destination address inputted. After a few minutes, it too failed. No idea why, again.

When I got to my hotel, I tried to get the navigation app working again as I had to travel to a few unfamiliar addresses. No luck.  So I switched to the Apple Maps app. I have been overloaded with new tech learning, and as I was happy with ‘Here we Go’, I hadn’t bothered learning this app.

I set it up with one of my addresses, and it worked fine. I preferred it over the old app, until it failed me as well. I tried to enter a second address. It told me there was no such address. I then tried to go back to the first address, only to be told there was no such address. 

Consequently, I sheepishly arrived over an hour late to the luncheon. I was bringing dessert. No fun.

With the new car, I wasn’t confident in the accuracy of the fuel gauge. With just two little lines left before ‘empty,’ I pulled in for gas about an hour before arriving home. I knew this fill-up would qualify me for a discount and a bonus of $5.00. My app would not load.

I was getting quite flustered with my relationship with technology, but luckily I remembered to ask for a paper receipt.

One sleep later, I got started on a training video from my favourite YouTube trainer on all things Apple. He had an hour-long video on how to use Apple Maps. Ah, I was able to sort everything out. The test will come in two days when I leave on a 10-day road trip.

Please give this a bit of a think. What is your relationship to technology? Do you turn away at every encounter? Do you fully embrace it? How are your coping skills when the technology does what you tell it to do, but not what you want it to do?

I am curious about your thoughts. Please comment below or send me an email with your bit of a think.

Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash

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glenn.walmsley@icloud.com