Lazy Corporations

I hate lazy technology. It has always been around, but the world of today it is more galling than ever.

For example; every car I've owned for the last few years has had a dandy little lever inside that opens a little door giving access to the gas cap. Nice. When you reach the little door, you have to reach inside and unscrew the dirty little gas cap. After pumping, you screw the gas cap in again manually, and then close the little door over it.

Is the car industry saying that they can't figure out a way for the lever inside the car to open the little door can't also open up the gas tank for pumping, and that closing the little door can't seal it off. It would seem so. Lazy.

Or how about my wonderful cable TV access. We have a lots of channels, but do not subscribe to all of the ones that our provider has. They sometimes give us free previews to channels, and for some reason occasionally move the channels that we do have around in the listing. There is no way to remember all of the ones we get or do not get.

Let us say I am scrolling through the guide, and notice a program. Do I get that channel, or do I not? There are some that I view often enough and am therefore sure about, but many I do not. The only way to find out is to go to that channel to see. Often I don't bother.

I would prefer that the channels that I do not receive not show up in the guide at all, but perhaps the cable company does it as a subtle form of advertising. I can understand that, but would colour coding the channels be such a big deal? Lazy.

There is stuff like this out there everywhere.

I bet you already have a few “favourites” of your own. Perhaps not, but how long would it take for you to notice one.

Make a game of it. Look for things that I've mentioned, but ignore them if they are being done by somebody who is small fry. The other day I went to a sports facility's web site to try and see their weekly schedule. They didn't have one anywhere on their site. They, however, are small fry. If it is somebody like Facebook, which refuses to permanently remember your display settings they are not.

It's more fun than you'd think, and easy.