UNITED STATES—There was some chaos this past week that should be a learning lesson to us all. Computers are not as great as we think they are, and while technology can make our lives easier, it can also create a frustration that is impossible to explain in words. Why can I say this? Well just look at what happened at a bevy of airports across the globe because of a software update. It left hundreds if not thousands of flights cancelled, tons of frustrated flyers and a host of airlines dealing with frustrated customers.
Making the situation worse is the fact that tons of flyers found themselves stranded. There was nowhere for them to go because the computer system was not working and the airlines were at an actual standstill. Can you imagine you are coming home from a vacation and you cannot get home? Think about you are scheduled to work and this outage prevents you from getting to work, what do you do in this situation?
There is not much you can do, but swallow your pride and hope for your best. Imagine if you are planning for a vacation and you’re planned for months and you get at the airport, and your flight is cancelled; you’re not going anywhere. Yeah, that is beyond frustrating. I had family members where that literally unfolded. They were planning a trip to St. Barts, got to the airport, flight was delayed to a connecting airport and as a result they missed another flight to go to St. Barts.
As a result they were being forced to fly to Miami, but once they got their flight was cancelled. Long story short, the entire trip that had been planned for months was cancelled within 24 hours. Yeah, something like that happening would boil my blood America I’m sorry. There is no way I would be happy with those things unfolding, not in the least bit.
You’ve paid for travel, now you have to try to get a refund, and you know the airlines are NOT sending you that refund right away. You’ve purchased clothing, you’ve had to commute to the airport, you’ve taken time off, and now you’re in a situation where you’ve lost a day or two or more on a vacation that is a complete bust.
This is not just about pivoting from a travel headache it raised a concern about the impact of technology on our lives. Some people couldn’t even bank properly, because the updates impacted banks. Could you imagine needing to get money from your bank account and not being able to do so. Oh, oh, America, I would be beyond livid, especially if I had a very important bill that needed to be paid or taken care of.
We are too tech savvy in this country and it is time for us to still rely on technology, but always have a backup plan in place just in case something like this happens. You don’t want to see a standstill in operations because you don’t have a backup plan in case the inevitable transpires. Hell, it is like I experienced several days last week where my internet was out. I had become so reliant on internet to function that my brain took a moment to process not being able to do so.
There is no argument that technology makes our lives easier, but we cannot be so dependent on tech that when something goes wrong we don’t know how to function. Thankfully the global tech outage only applied to mainly flights and a few banks and such. Could you imagine if we had such an outage that impacted everything electronic, television, internet, cellphones, banking, phones and everything that is so much of our daily operations? Yeah, I don’t want to even imagine, it almost takes me back to that blackout in 2003 that so many panicked that the country was under attack. That is something we don’t want to see at all.
Written By Jason Jones
