Is It Just Me Or Is Technology Turning Things To Crap?

It seems to me that technology hasn’t been a major improvement in some areas. Take digital television for example. Watching a movie late last night and the signal dropped completely 7 or 8 times for 20-30 seconds each time over a period of around 45 minutes. That never used to happen with analog TV. Sure, you’d have times in extreme weather where there might be some minor disruptions, but not dropouts when the signal seems perfect.

I just turned on the TV today to watch Bathurst. Picture is clear, but the audio is making chirping noises and cutting in and out almost continuously.

Telephones are another technology that has let us down in several areas. Specifically, those sophisticated automated answering services that infuriate us when they assure us that we are an important customer and then, after 20 or 30 minutes, send us to some cheap off-shore call center. Sometimes the call center uses VOIP which (at least in my experience) is less reliable than Skype – poor audio, fading in and out or they are just too quiet to hear anyway. I wonder if any of those large organisations ever actually check their own support services? I suspect not.

Well I guess I’ll just go do something else – Seven’s V8 Supercars just isn’t watchable at the moment.