Change For The Sake of Change: A Rant of Frustration

There is a comedy routine, a group of engineers are helping a young business woman improve her assembly line and enhance sales of her product.  She manufactures up-scale hair barrettes.  The engineers insist that they need to add blue tooth wireless technology to the barrettes because everything is better with blue tooth. 

The routine is a ridiculous example of technology geeks advocating change for the sake of change.  Yet, this pattern of changing technology simply because we can change technology is reaching these ridiculous extremes. 

I will admit that I have been called a Luddite.  And, I may be.  But do we really need so much change, so quickly?  I used to own a flip phone.  I now have a smart phone, only because people around me were embarrassed whenever I would answer the telephone with my antiquated contraption.  The only advantage to my smart phone is the numbers are larger than my flip phone.  It is now easier for me to see the numbers when I dial.

I am trying to muster as much sarcasm as possible as I write: I can’t wait for the next installment of windows or Microsoft office.  I am so excited with the new procedures for writing documents that require me to change the type font to Times Roman because some mental giant has decided that Calibri is more appropriate as a default font and 11 point type is better than the larger and more legible 12 point.  And, I so enjoy changing the spacing from “normal” to “no spacing” every time I create a document.  Thank you to all of the Microsoft and windows engineers and programmers for allowing me to determine the page layout every time I create a new document and forcing me to utilize too much of my time to reset pages that should be default standards.

While I am at it, thank you to every telephone manufacturer in the world for determining my telephone needs to be something more than just a telephone.  I don’t remember how I managed to live without a camera in my telephone, along with text messaging and wireless technology.  Special thanks goes out to the singular “genius” that determined my telephone needed to be so much more than just a telephone.

Today is one of those days when the standard of change for the sake of change is overwhelming.  This morning I had to work with a new index for genealogy research.  Some “genius” decided to combine several indices to make research more of a muddled mess.  It appears to be change for the sake of change.  Honestly, I don’t need any more new and improved “whatevers” in my life.  Is it too much to expect the technology in life to simply function in the manner that it is expected? 

A second cliché keeps running through my brain: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  To all of those techno-geeks, engineers and computer programmers out there, stop fixing it, it ain’t broke.