The Vegas Voice 12-19

The Tyranny of Technology
By: Judy Polumbaum / Our View
You know those days when you want to take
all your technological gadgets and grind
them into the dust?
Your cell phone is misbehaving. Files mysteriously vanish from your
computer. That sort of thing.
You start muttering like an old fogey about the good old days before
life was so complicated.
But darn, you depend on these things. So, you call the help line.
The other day, I was on the line for the software program that keeps
my laptop hard drive spic and span. The subscription had expired.
I wanted to ask about a discount for the renewal. The polite fellow
at the other end, identified only as Tech4005 in the chat window on
my screen, turned out to be sitting in the Ukraine. And yes, he was
Ukrainian.
I complimented him on his flawless English. He said he’d spent some
time in Miami.
I told him my mother’s father came from Ukraine; so I’m part
Ukrainian! Then I said I wished our president would stop meddling
in his country’s affairs. But we didn’t have to talk about that. “Yes,” he
said, “we’re not supposed to talk about that.”
Sure I could get a discount I considered a really deep cleaning with a
better program. A new window popped up on my screen, with payment
options. Instead of $40 a year, I could get the super-turbo-charged
variant for $1200 a year.
I could buy a new laptop for that! Fugheddaboudit!
Then it occurred to me: This nice compatriot of my grandpa was
serving double duty – along with tech support, he was expected to do
sales.
I envisioned his script: DON’T discuss politics. DO peddle the more
expensive product - the fancy designer version. It was simply the
protocol.
An unwary computer moron like me could easily fall into the trap.
Luckily, I stayed alert and stuck with the cheap gateway drug, which
works fine.
But I relearned a lesson that day: buyer beware. All the more so in
the digital age.
Judy is a professor emerita of journalism and a transplant to
Las Vegas from New England via China, the West Coast and the
Midwest.
30
December 2019