Contact Your Network Administrator

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier and in many cases it does. I can not express how much I appreciate not having to wash my family’s piles of clothing on a rock in a stream. I also love not having to build a fire each time I want to cook and I really appreciate the refrigerator—especially after using a drippy, unreliable icebox for the first time. Believe me I am very excited that technology has taken much of the work out of cleaning, cooking and simply getting around town. The problem is that we’ve reached this point where technology is no longer seamless and therefore, no longer simplifies our lives.


The reason why I love my microwave is that, although I have a basic understanding of how it works (vibrating water particles to create heat), I don’t have to actually tell the microwave what frequency to vibrate the particles nor do I have to speak with three separate tech support lines in order to get it working. Kitchen appliances are technology in its best form—seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives without fuss.

My home entertainment system is not seamless. The box said it was seamless and easy to setup—but it’s not. It’s also not a whole house entertainment network, so wonderfully pitched by computer and television companies. I have now spent enough time on tech support lines or crawling into small spaces to fix connections that I could have had my master’s degree completed online—except that, right now, I can’t get the Internet to work. What the pitchmen for entertainment technology do not tell you is that wireless is unreliable, speakers still require wires you have to hide somewhere and no one can really get their entertainment on demand. The dream is a wonderful dream. I think about it all the time. No more flipping channels because the show you want is there when you want it. Want some music to set the mood for dinner? Click a button and it’s yours, along with a new recipe thanks to the new computer built into your countertop. Ah, life would be sweet. The reality isn’t even remotely digestible. Today I can’t get my Internet to run. Three hours of tech support later and I’m told that it must be my wireless router, only they don’t work on wireless routers. No, that requires that you call an entirely different company or that you “contact your network administrator.” This is the new “shove-off” phrase because only companies with hundreds of employees even have network administrators.

Perhaps Thoreau had the right idea when he decided to unplug from society and see just how simply he could live his life. Then again, that would bring me back to washing my clothing in a stream with a rock and I can’t go there. When I complain about the Internet being down, my even less tech-savvy husband steps in to help. He sits at the computer and presses buttons until he calls out to me, “Hon, it just says that we should contact our network administrator.” Yep. Next time the cable company calls about a past due bill I wonder if they’ll know what I mean when I tell them to “contact your network administrator” for payment.