E-Problems

Advances in Electronics in the 1980s allowed us to increase productivity and resulted in a revolution in product development.  Much of this has resulted in products and services that allowed us to do things more efficiently. But there have also been “unintended consequences”.

We started with office connected and home-based PCs in the 1980s. Microprocessors were too small and weak to allow internet access until the 1990s. We connected our PCs at work through “servers” and were able to access files on the server. All of our company information was accessible. Office productivity improved. 

We then moved to expanding the capability of our telephones. First with wireless home phones and then with cell phones.  Then we developed the cell phones to access the internet and GPS and take photographs with what we called “Smartphones”. We were able to establish websites and blogsites. Facebook became a way to share photographs with friends and relatives by simply uploading our photographs to Facebook.

Books became available for download on Kindle and encyclopedias appeared on Wikipedia and we no longer had to go to the public library to find information, because it was all accessible.

The advances made in flat-screen technology allowed us to replace our old, heavy TV sets with light weight, large flat-screen TVs.

On the downside, we fought our way through the virus plagues on our home PCs and replaced them with new PCs that had bigger microprocessors. We bought 3 terabyte hard drives and download software to replace floppy discs. Then came “the cloud”. We had already been through the transition from LP records to 8 track tapes to cassette tapes to CDs, so we knew the drill.  Surround-Sound came and went.

Lap-top PCs and their smaller counterparts flooded into offices and homes. Now kids play games on their pin-pads and no longer need to hook up their X-Boxes to the TV. APPs for everything are now available on “Smartphones”.

Kids who use Facebook to comment are wasting time in a desperate effort to be attacked by their peers.  Kids who are obsessed with game-boards are isolating and putting their mental health at risk. 

Hackers are routinely attacking corporate and government websites. Our credit cards and debit cards pose a threat to our finances. We will stop using them as soon as we hear about our bank accounts being emptied.  We are not crazy about “identity theft” and therefore are not happy with illegal immigrants. We are not crazy about having our internet use used to create annoying pop-up ads on our PCs. We don’t like listening to 3 minutes of TV ads every 30 minutes. It is a chore to find anything worth watching on TV. We don’t believe the liberal propaganda in our newspapers.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader