It Will Never Work
I had to get a new phone this week. It was the second time in two months, and the whole exercise filled me with dread. I had that panicky feeling all day; the kind you get when you need to initiate a difficult conversation or when you’re waiting for news.
When my phone died a few months ago and I had to get a new one, Josh and I planned that I would give him the new phone when his phone died, and I would get the new-new phone. I use the camera a lot for work, so it made sense that I should have the device with the better camera. Plus the kids use my phone, so… three against one?
Anyway, we thought this was a brilliant plan until we had to put it into practice. To do this, I needed to back up my phone, wipe my phone, give Josh my phone so he could take it to the store and purchase the new phone, set up the phones with the correct phone number, re-sync the phone with the backup.
There was so much room for error.
It’s interesting how my gut instinct was that this was not going to work. I was going to run into a lot of frustration. Either the backup would be corrupt or something would be wrong with the new phone. In any case, exchanging phones was a fool’s errand that would suck hours out of my week and leave me phone-less for days.
Whereas the kids were excited. New phone? That meant new features and new things to figure out. They were puzzled why I was so worried about this. Just plug in the phone and technology will take care of everything.
I assume technology will always fail and am amazed when it works.
They assume technology will always work and are confused when it fails.
I don’t like change. I am not a good person for a yearly phone upgrade program. My stomach was in knots while I attempted to load everything on the phone. It mostly worked. It took a really long time, and it got stuck in a continual loop at the end. But it’s fine. I think.
Do you assume technology will always work or do you assume technology will always fail?
13 comments
Haha — MY assumption when it comes to new technology is that *I* won’t be able to figure it out! :p 😉 I hear you, Mel. We just got a new flat-screen, HD LED TV (stepBIL helped us with the initial setup for that) — then we had to get an HD box to go WITH the TV (& figure THAT out — not to mention it’s costing us an extra $13 on our monthly cable to be able to watch HDTV on our HDTV, grrrr…), & we’ve had to call the cable company at least three times for help, because every time there is a new download, it screws everything up. :p Then we got a new car (our old one was 12+ years old)… it has all kinds of high-tech bells & whistles we are still trying to figure out. We recently realized we really do need to trade in our 8-year-old flip phones for smartphones… but we’ve decided to wait until after Christmas. There is only so much new technology two aging baby boomers can master at once. :p
A cascading set of events wherein an app’s auto-update required me to update my phone’s OS (b/c it kept crashing in the older system), rendered my phone incompatible with iTunes, so I couldn’t sync to make a back up, but I couldn’t update iTunes because my computer’s OS was way too old so long story short I had to jump from 10.6.8 to 10.11.1 and to say I didn’t think it was going to work is the understatement of the year. But you know what, it did work. I still can’t really believe it.
You’ve probably hit on a major distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants.
I’m an immigrant. I over-anticipate complication. My kids under-anticipate it. We are probably both off by the same degree.
I’m a tech-y, and a bit less emotional about gadgets i think. I assume that with a couple of resets and updates we will get there. Some things will be better, some things you will miss.
There is always pencil and paper.
Good luck with you new phone!
Oh, Mel. How I hear you! My stomach was in knots just reading your story. My iPhone is exhibiting signs of fatigue and ultimately failure. I’m praying it will hold on for a few more months.
And Loribeth, I fully understand the rip off that upgrading can turn into. It’s just not right that you have to have the more expensive cable box to make your HDTV work in HD. We fell into that black hole, too. ?
I try not to think about technology too much. When I do, it’s usually along the lines of “well, this can’t be good!” Guess that makes me a “it’s going to fail” type. ?
I think I’m somewhere in the middle with a constant hope that it’ll work. I try not to assume it will fail, but I also try to be overly prepared if it does (fighting the urge to say “when it does”).
I loathe updating my technology. I always assume the worst will happen. Plus, my learning curve is steep. My husband is the opposite and always wants the updated everything. This has led to some interesting conflict. I’m the old lady, of course. 😉
I can tell where my mind is today – I read your blog title and immediately thought, “that is my exact fear” …about infertility. Smack dab in the middle of our 2ww with FET #2/transfer #3. Oy. This journey is not for the faint of heart!
I definitely fall into the “always fails” camp. I’m sort of skeptical of new technology in general and usually want to make sure any new thing is well-established and useful to me before making the leap. I don’t even own a smartphone (I’m 33 for the record) – although that’s probably coming in the near future.
I assume that technology SHOULD work and then just get frustrated and angry when it doesn’t.
At work, I embrace new technology and have a lot of fun learning how new things work. At home, I absolutely hate getting a new phone, or a new DVR, or anything that takes time to learn and understand. I’m sure this discrepancy has a lot to do with the fact that my job has become rather mundane and predictable, and my home life is anything but! I hate wasting time shopping and reading user manuals. I leave almost all technology-related duties at home to my husband. He actually enjoys it, and has a great deal more patience for it than I do.
I am somewhere in the middle. I try to keep the dread at bay. I don’t hate change but I also don’t hop on the new and improved train too quickly.
Good luck with the new and improved.
I feel the same as you. I have been struggling with a storage problem for some time on my phone. The fix it people just upgraded the software but now for some reason I can’t share pictures on Twitter which is big for me as a blogger. Have to wait till April to upgrade or do a clean install which involves backing up everything which I don’t know how to do. But I will figure it out.