Standing in the way of progress

As many of you will know, it doesn't take much for me to get on my soapbox and complain about things that bug me in day to day life. The name of this blog is a bit of a giveaway to that fact really.

One thing that I am finding increasingly frustrating - is a combination of the slow progress we are making in certain areas, combined with an astonishing reluctance to let go of some genuinely pointless and outdated technology. I feel a list coming on;

1) Fax Machines

It's the year 2012 for heavens sake. Why are people still using fax machines? This is a technology that seemingly just refuses to die. There are so many alternatives now too. Email, FTP Servers, Text Message, iMessage, all manner of Live Chat. So why won't people just let go of their fax machines? I just don't get it. They are old, unreliable - cartridges cost money, and every alternative is just so much cheaper and easier. So why won't fax machines just go away and politely expire??

2) Cheques

Why we still need cheques is beyond me. I can't imagine anyone could argue otherwise. In this day and age, the cheque has become truly pointless. We have credit/debit cards, Online Banking, even Apps for Smartphones such as the excellent Barclays Ping-it. I can never find my cheque book, and if receive I a cheque - I then have the inconvenience of having to go to the damn Bank on my lunch break when I should be in the canteen eating my supernoodles and mackerel.

3) Cash

OK, maybe I'm ahead of my time on this one, and I think 10 years from now we will genuinely be very near to living in a cashless society. That being said, in the here and now - I find cash to be an absolute nuisance, and like our Queen - as a rule I don't carry it.

Yesterday I was in a hospital car park, and I happened to know that the parking machine takes credit/debit cards - so I don't have to worry about taking cash. However, even though the machine accepts my pin, it decides to refuse my transaction. So I am left fumbling in my wallet trying to find £2.50 whilst an irate group of people wait behind me at the single machine. In what can only be described as sheer miracle, I actually manage to scrape together £2.50 (I may then have said out loud "dumbass machine, and stormed off). The point being though - I should not have had to have cash in this situation.

There are early signs of progress in this area. For example, you can now order takeaway food online at just-eat.co.uk and pay with your card, and you don't have to pick up the phone and talk to some fool who is going to get your order wrong. Your food is then delivered and you don't have the problem of having the grumpy delivery bloke whine and complain when you give him a £20 note (because you've already paid in advance). Seriously though, these delivery blokes annoy me beyond belief. It's absolutely not my responsibility to have change for him just to make his life easy is it!!!

I could go on about cash all day actually? Why for example in 2012 don't snack machines let you pay by card - or at the very least, why don't they take coppers (the only cash I ever seem to have in abundance).

Cash is just not my friend. I never have any on me when there is some sort of collection at work for the new baby of the wife of someone on the shop floor that I have said hello to twice in 14 years! I swear, cash is just a pain. The sooner you can scan your thumb on a little pad of some sort to pay for anything at any time - the happier I'll be!

4) Broadband Speeds/4G/LTE

Given that there is so much you can now download, and stream over the internet these days - we in the UK are embarrassingly behind other countries when it comes to broadband connections and mobile capabilities. I sometimes feel as if we are still using 56k modems when I have to wait for a YouTube video to buffer. There should be no damn buffering! Buffering should be a thing of the past. The most irritating thing about this is that all the big Communications companies seem to do is argue about it instead of working together to get these technologies up and running better for everyone. I don't care about the politics of it or which network brings it first. Just get it done for heavens sake!!!


Anyway, if I put my mind to it, this list could go on forever so I'll quit right here for now. Hopefully the above listed will not continue to ruin my life for too much longer!

Peter