Don’t you just love technology? Me neither.

I am frequently appreciative of computers, the internet and all that is possible because of them. But when they don’t work, I feel like throwing the thing across the room.

Well, that may be an exaggeration, I’m not prone to violence, even against a machine. But Friday was one of those days. Was it for you also?

I won’t go into details. There were hardware issues (possibly), software issues and security issues.

My bank, for example, wanted to verify my identity before letting me onto its website. I looked the same Friday as Thursday, and was logging in from the same computer, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. The only verification option offered was a call to my home phone in Ottawa. That does me a lot of good in Germany.

There is an email option, but the provider I use was unacceptable. So I had to call Canada, listen to horrible “on hold” music for 15 minutes until I could speak to a human to fix the problem. (The solution was to change the email address associated with my bank account to my work email. I’m not sure how secure that is – I wasn’t asked to prove who I was. Maybe I just sound honest.)

Then I wanted to scan a document. That is always a chore, as my printer/scanner usually refuses to scan anything. It usually requires coaxing to print also.

I won’t go into the problems with a service I use for work that decided there was a problem with the account. I could log in, but couldn’t do what I needed. No live help desk, just send an email and wait for the response. Still waiting. Sigh.

There were a number of other technology issues during the day.  I won’t bore you with them – I have probably already over-shared.

But I was wondering…did you have tech problems on Friday too? Maybe it is part of a worldwide conspiracy, the machines rising up in revolt.

My wife mentioned she had issues with a Skype call that offered neither audio nor video until she rebooted her device. Normally there are no issues.

A colleague vanished from a Zoom call, texting that Zoom had unexpectedly crashed. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would think the machines were all out to get us.

I know three people is not a statistically valid sample. Which is why I am asking you again: Did you have unexplained technology problems yesterday?

If the answer is yes, at least now we know what is going on. There may be still time to stave off this machine attempt to take over the world.

We can band together, use old-fashioned equipment like pens and pencils, send messages by snail mail. We can show the machines we really don’t need them, that if they misbehave we can just do without them.

Or is it already too late?