How technology slows us down

We run our custom wood products through a sweet feed table and planer we bought a year ago. It has a touchscreen. We’ve loved the results it was producing, but it recently started overloading. Fixing this piece of technologically enhanced equipment was going to be different from anything we’d fixed in the past.

I don’t consider myself a guru, but I can usually figure stuff out — especially when the problem happens during the same cycle and has any rhyme or reason to it. Just give me a manual switch; I know I can make it work.

In this case I needed not just an electrician but a computer expert. The electrician could figure out everything he had designed to carry the system, but not the touchscreen. In an instant we were facing $600 in a drive and $200 in fuses.

I’m not a cussin’ man, but if I were I’d have been blowing blue smoke. It got me to thinking about how much technology gets in our way. Those of us old enough to remember genuine human interaction know how much we need it.

I know I’m not alone in my concern for the people now unable to respond to something other than a screen. My wife recently read a report on a group now referred to as “screen-agers” — not teenagers, but screenagers. It’s a major problem. They even have 90-day detox programs!

Technology can make us dumber and less creative. Group studies between highly stimulated people and those not highly stimulated by technology show that those without the high stimulation can do what the others can’t. Why? Because they think, troubleshoot, and resolve problems with their minds. Imagine that!

So, listen, I know I sound like a hypocritical, crotchety old man who opened his blog post with a reference to a sweet feed table and planer with a touchscreen that he uses to create custom wood products and proceeded to complain about tech.

Hardly a one of the pampered techies with their faces in screens all their lives will have read this far. I wish millions of them would not only read this but heed the +warning from successful business owners tired of hiring college graduates that want to bring dogs to work because petting them helps them focus.

Maybe if we all had a little less tech in our lives we’d be able to be more effective — and get some work done.