Technology - Boon or Bane?
What a corny topic for today. However, much as this topic is alike talking to old people about brushing their teeth [or dentures], there’s still an interesting touch to it.
Right kidos, you can stop having old people with only gums smiling at you in your imagery! =X
It has always been said that technology brings people closer, people at the other end of the world would be able to communicate with you in real time!
On the downside, however, most people have the tendency to neglect neighbors and other people.
Technology, is often marketed as a tool that saves time. You no longer need to have meetings in person, organisations do not need to fork out as much money to send their representatives overseas for negotiations.
Anyone can read and learn about the vast knowledge that’s out there in the open! Some knowledge is free for all, and the web is indeed a good place to research and such. I, for one, love Googling [technology creates lame & techy terms] stuffs compared to physically going down to the library to research!
I could go on and on about the good of Technology, but like a double-edged sword, the existence of technology gives rise to employment "opportunities" to IT experts and hackers alike.
I’ve always had this weird theory, that if we didn’t rely so much on our handphone, we wouldn’t be late for gatherings. In the past, when you make appointments with friends, you’ll stick to it by hook or by crook after leaving the house.
Now with our mobile phones, we tend to text one another with "I’ll be late for 10 minutes, diarrhoea ah!" excuses.
Like as if Singapore has so many wrong food to eat, that people keep having diarrhoea!
Sidenote: Diarrhoea and headache is the two most used sickness to claim sick leaves. =P
In a way, in my personal and humble opinion, Technology gave me the chance to express myself in writing, when I could hardly do so in spoken words. But that also made me less willing to speak up more often.
In my previous job, I saw how the introduction of any system, would cause uproar and dissatisfaction amongst people who are affected by it.
CPF’s E-submission for employers is supposed to save paper transactions between the employers and the board.
However, all those documentation purposes is leaving the office stacked with more rims of paper! Then again we need to look at the long term, though which seems obviously bleak. =X
Now, we have this online document system [change of name to protect myself! Please don't sue me for libel, what's written in this blog is my opinionated judgement!] in my company. What’s expected of me, is to scan those documents to the online system, so that any people can retrieve it online from any location.
Yeah, that was the plan, but the loopholes are caused by the exact efforts of the company to safeguard its security issues. You can’t PDF the documents immediately from the system [there is a choice for it, however, it has been disabled], and the only way is to print out those documents.
Problem is, the system prints at snail speed, and hangs my computer whenever I try to print more than 5 pages? Each page takes around 5 minutes to print successfully, so in the end, I’d figure that it’s more worthwhile to retrieve the physical document to PDF and email over. Gee.
And the one thing that annoys me most, is that workers in the same office would rather email you than to call out for you, especially when they are only 2 metres away. Not pin-pointing at anyone, this is just a general trend. =)
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Long weekend for me! =) Nonetheless, a busy one at that. Enjoy your weekend!