Phobia of high-tech gadgets.
Though I maintain a website, strive to catch up with the (ever-changing) web standards, do (php) scriptings to make website more interactive (think Graffiti, though it’s almost never really done, but this is another story for another entry), and generally sound all so geeky with some modern technologies in my other posts, truth is I am having really very little faith in them.
In fact, to the extend that I am actually afraid of them. Yes, you read it right — all these high-tech gadgets that are supposed to make our lives simpler are scaring me. High-tech gadgets here refer to devices that are invented so little human interactions are involved when doing transaction, compared with previous low-tech methods.
Modern technologies are built with precision, and that’s where the problem lies. They are so precise that any slight error will cause it not to work as intended. They lack the inflexibility human enjoys. I find doing transaction with a human generally more user-friendly than working with these devices.
Either I almost always couldn’t be bothered with reading instructions, or I’m just retarded. As idiot-proof as they are designed, I will always mishandle them, resulting in unwanted attention from people in the queue as though I was living in the cave for the past 20 years of my life just because I couldn’t possibly not know how to handle such machine.
Once bitten, twice shy.
They don’t understand my fear of high-tech gadgets. Maybe it’s because I feel embarrassed easily whenever something unexpected occurs and the mentioned scenario happens. But I can’t help feeling rushed whenever I’m handling such devices, eg. an ATM. I can’t really blame them though because anyone who chooses to go the automatic way is definitely wanting to get things done faster; and there I am, mishandling the machine or reading instructions slowly, resulting in something that is inverse of what they had expected.
So when today my friends mentioned to me about using the automated way of adding values to my ez-Link, I turned him down straight away, telling him about the phobia that I am suffering from.
If you think about it, it’s truly weird for someone who is obsessed with technologies to be fearing the same thing he is obsessed with.