When Tech is Too Much

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When Kiplinger Retirement Report editor David Crook used his monthly column to get some things off his chest, he struck a chord with our readers.

As one wrote, "I LOVED your 'rant'... I agree that we are being 'dummied-down' and dehumanized by: automated messages, restaurant phone menus, tech instructions that are not understood by people speaking English (my husband is a tech guy and he gets VERY frustrated). Oh, and all these apps for my coffee machine, washer, dryer. AND, don't get me started about self-checkout lines and I have to bring my own bags."

So we decided to share his tirade with our online readers and give you a chance to vent, too. Read on for David's take on tech:

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It’s no exaggeration that we are confronted daily with tales of outrageous online frauds and scams. We have repeatedly published stories in the Kiplinger Retirement Report. in our sister print publications and here at Kiplinger.com about the susceptibility of older adults especially to internet cons and how to avoid them.

So I’m not writing today about how bad people have taken over a portion of our online lives. No, but I am writing about how otherwise good people have made modern life less livable while professing to do just the opposite. I’m going to rant about the technology world itself and how the technicians behind it have created a robotic cyberverse we all now must inhabit whether we want to or not.

I’ll preface my harangue, however, by saying I’m not another Luddite Baby Boomer who is simply baffled by all this new-fangled tech stuff. I have a smartphone, a tablet, a personal laptop, a company laptop, a sophisticated dual-screen desktop setup and a smart TV. In my career, I have mastered more “content management systems” — that’s technobabble for typing, designing and publishing — than I care to count.

I have worked with electronic banking since Quicken was an MS-DOS program and Zell(e) was just the unusual first name of a Georgia governor. I wear a Fitbit. I listen to Spotify. I do my own installations, software updates and even some hardware repairs and upgrades.

But I am not a technician, and I am tired of being forced to function in a technician’s dehumanized digital dystopia. I am not looking forward to even more AI in my future.

I already hate effervescent bots named Tiffani or Andii telling me my call is very important when it’s not important enough to be answered by a person.

I am tired of talking to obstinate binary automatons and insisting, louder and louder, “Representative, please. REPRESENTATIVE, PLEASE!!”

I’m sick of using my phone to read restaurant menus.

I’m angered by people at sales counters or reception desks telling me I have to conduct my business on my phone or at a kiosk even though I am standing right in front of them.

Why do I have to have an app on my phone for everything, anyway? Hell, McDonald’s is pushing you to order with their app in the drive-through! Haven’t they heard of no-texting-while-driving?

I am tired of badly written tech instructions that leave out pertinent steps in the process of whatever it is I’m trying to do.

I am frazzled by programs and apps that promise to free me from some form of drudgery but deliver another kind altogether.

I’m openly thrilled that retailers are cutting back their use of self-checkout kiosks because real live human beings are reacting like real live human beings and walking out of the stores without paying.

And, to paraphrase Taylor Swift, I will never ever ride in a driverless taxi.

I could go on, but I’m feeling better already.

Now it's your turn. Scroll down a bit to vote on which of these tech annoyances you'd like to banish first.

Note: A version of this item first appeared in Kiplinger Retirement Report, our popular monthly periodical that covers key concerns of affluent older Americans who are retired or preparing for retirement. Subscribe for retirement advice that’s right on the money.

David Crook is an innovative editor and developer of print and online publications on a wide variety of subjects, from real estate to show business, finance to politics. Prior to joining Kiplinger, David invented, launched and edited “The Wall Street Journal Sunday” — the largest- circulation business print publication in U.S. history. David is also the author of The Journal’s “Complete Real Estate Investing Guidebook” and “Complete Home Owner’s Guidebook.”

Prior to the 1999 launch of Sunday Journal, David was on the team that introduced the paper’s highly successful Weekend Journal effort, expanding the world’s premier business newspaper from five days a week to six. Before joining The Journal in New York in 1995, David was managing editor of a group of suburban Los Angeles newspapers, and, before that, a writer and deputy editor for the Los Angeles Times arts and entertainment department.

Before that, he was reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., for what is today known as Broadcasting and Cable magazine. In 2017, he co-founded DCReport.org, a news website focused on national political matters. David received a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Tulane University, New Orleans.