Who is at fault?

Have you ever had that experience where you have finished some kind of computer project and you need to print it out before you leave the house to take it to school, uni or work. Now if you are anything like I was yesterday, you may take your time getting ready to leave and just think to yourself Ï will print that out before I leave”, so it comes time to go and you head over to your computer and turn it on…..hold on we now have to wait for 32 computer updates to finish installing before the computer is ready to start using….we now have 5 minutes left before we seriously have to be in the car….hold on…oh man the computer froze, we have to restart….we now have only three minutes left, we finally open the document and press print…hold on….oh no, the printer is out of paper….we put more paper in and are getting really frustrated by now cos we really have to go, we press print again and …. oh, now the printer is out of ink…..we put more ink in and finally print the document and we are now running 7 minutes late, we race to the car and realise we left the document on the printer, we race back inside the house, grab the document, race back to the car and we are finally on our way, but are running quite late …argh!!! (by now we are probably thinking or saying some really frustrated thoughts about how annoying the computer and printer were for not hurrying up and doing their job)…. I had one of these moments….I needed technology to help me out right then and there, but no, it failed me…. But then when I calmed myself down, reflecting I thought “Who is really at fault?” With the great advancements in technology, I think we now put more expectations on technology to perform right NOW!!! We try to fit so much more into our day and assume that the simple process of printing a document should only take a second so we leave it to the last minute….we could have printed it out hours ago, or before we spent all that time reading through the junk mail that arrived in the letter box and had a really good bargain on nose hair trimmers or that really cool deal where if you get a gym membership now it will be so much cheaper….we waste more time now because of our expectations of our electronic technologies. I believe that technology, although very useful, is making us more impatient and demanding. After all we must remember, slow down, take a big deep breath – the object you are getting annoyed at is a computer/printer/television etcetera, not a human. We can’t really be annoyed at technology when things don’t go our way, computers aren’t vindictive and thinking to themselves “Ha ha I might freeze now to make your life a little slower”, but we can control our own selves, be organised, utilise technology, but be more prepared rather than getting frustrated, take some responsibility for your own choices.