Bad Technology Day

I depend on my technology a lot. It runs my business. I had been waiting anxiously for July 11. In spite of the fact that July 11 is my sister's birthday, it was also the day Apple was to release the software upgrade for my iPhone. Like millions of people around the world, at 8:02 am I plugged in my phone and launched iTunes (the program that connects the phone to the computer).

Things started out fine, but then error messages began appearing. It turns out I wasn't the only person looking forward to the upgrade. In a move that can only be described as Microsoft-esque in hubris and strategic stupidity, Apple had not planned for the tremendous load that would hit their servers. You may have seen it on the news -- thousands of people who had stood in line to purchase the new iPhone couldn't get their phone activated. But what was worse -- far worse -- were those of us who were upgrading our previous phone and suddenly realized we were the proud owners of an iBrick, a useless piece of technology that wouldn't work.

It took two and a half hours of clicking and re-clicking a link in iTunes before my phone was finally operational again.

But that wasn't the end of my technology hell. Late in the afternoon I couldn't access my email for two hours and we were in the middle of having 500 people complete our online assessment. I was supposed to provide technical assistance. After three calls to Yahoo I was finally put it touch with the right person who had no idea what was going on. But they must have eventually found the error and I was able to get back to work. Thankfully, no one had a problem.

As Alice Kahn once said, "For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three. "