If anyone reading this column has been trying to reach me, I am alive and well, and on hold at the local payphone. Sorry about the email pile-up, too. I'm really beginning to think something is in the air, because a close colleague is experiencing similar electronic calamities. I draw several inferences from this technological meltdown. But in truth, we are more like the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Ordinary tools are now more baroque than they're worth.
As high-tech systems become more complicated, they have more ways to go awry. The very first generation of word processing was easier to use and less prone to mysterious glitches. Each generation of Windows is more difficult to use than the last, and buggier. Second, just as technology is becoming more Byzantine and prone to breakdown, deregulation makes its servicing less reliable. Because intense competition puts great pressure on companies to cut costs, human contact is a luxury they can't afford.