Please Listen carefully Because Your Options Have Changed: Freedom Is Now the New Prison

 June 8, 2025

   Is it just me, or has tech complicated even the most simple tasks, all the while promising to make things much more "simple"?

   Kathy's birthday was yesterday so I called Manuel's to make a reservation and the 12-year-old who answered the phone told me, "We don't take reservations anymore, you need to go to Yelp." Really? So I go to Yelp.com and get some Prove You Are Not A Robot quiz that shows three dogs with birthday cone hats on and then it asks me what images below do NOT match the first three. Gee, I don't know, the eel, definitely not, the cat? Maybe? Long story short, I spent about ten minutes trying to prove I am not a robot and the punchline is, I failed the test and couldn't get on Yelp and did not make a reservation at Kathy's favorite restaurant. We went there anyway and when we approached the hostess station I noticed there were three young ladies chatting there and apparently not one of them could be bothered to take a reservation over the phone. 

   Full disclosure: we went at two which is usually a slow time and got right in and had a great time. I was tempted to talk to the manager, but I did not. Proving maturity is a thing could still happen for me.

Kathy Sue and her beautiful sis, Debra

enjoying a birthday dish of fried iced cream

without reservations!

And speaking of phones and phone messaging systems, does this sound familiar?

Please Listen Carefully Because Some of Our Options Have Changed

   No ship, Sherlock. What we thought was simple—call a restaurant, make a reservation—is now riddled with phone promps and ridiculous hurdles.

   A friend of mine who works in state government described a Zoom call with the various heads of Arizona State government, who collectively represent some 90,000 employees. The tech bros running the meeting were extolling their new system that is going to simplify everyone's life and my friend had to laugh. They always say that and it's always way more complicated, just to get in the system, much less use it.

Oh, And It's Not Just The Smart Cars

   "I can sympathize with you on the design and tech on new cars, but it's not just cars. I've been a Harley Davidson mechanic for the last 25 years and see the same stupid stuff with their products. They have never been great at easy intuitive design. It's only gone from bad to worse over the years. At least they don't shut off at intersections.......yet."

—Herb Martin, fellow Aging Boomer

P.S.  I call them a lot worse than Twits & Buttheads.

Welcome to the age of AI, where algorithms
grow bigger, and minds get smaller,
where freedom is the new prison,
character retreats as cave dweller.
Welcome to the age of AI,
where deceit is the new creativity,
where hate is a human right,
malinformation is a legal industry.

—Abhijit Naskar