Are we over reliant on IT?

This is a simple but very important question to ask. There is not a single facet of every day life which involves some form of high technology. I would say 99.99 percent of people do not actually know anything about the inside workings of IT, particularly how to program.  We take it for granted. We are users and abusers of IT, it is used and abused to our very needs and desires every single day. Be it by multiple caresses of a smart phone to ordering all your Chrimbo presents online.  We wait and then hey presto, the phone throws out all the information desired or within a day or two all those Chrimbo presents are bought straight to the front door. IT has made us lazy and each day my arse gets fatter from it.  I am whooping this IT thing and it takes it. It bends to my will, it gives me everything I want, and then on occasion, every once in a while IT fights back by not acting as it should.  Or by getting ill, catching a virus, or just finding it is incompatible with some other piece of IT equipment just like a jealous child seeing another child play with a toy and so doing everything it can to get the toy back or show it's annoyance. IT takes on a quite human like action.  It fails.

At the Fish Factory, IT has suddenly become the bane of every user.  It is slow, but not only is it slow it is more like at a full stop. If the IT at the Fish Factory were a snail, it would be going up hill on a reverentially rainy day.  Slipping and sliding backwards at every chance. As an IT user this has not just become frustrating it has become intolerable. There is not a moment which passes when I could just stand up and scream expletives until I was expleted out completely. The people who run the IT are not running it efficiently, they have taken assumptions which are completely wrong. As a result the entire Fish Factory is having days go past where little to no work is actually being done. Thousands upon thousands of pounds is being spent on people just looking at monitors and wondering what they will cook for their evening meal when they get home. As the monitors stand still a small revolving blue like donought is fixed in the centre.  More and more piles of Widgets come in every day and are not put through the normal processes of the machine. They stand still waiting and nothing is done. At a time when all the fishes are about who should be about as well. With few going on holiday, money is wasted on their sitting watching blue revolving circles.  They ring me up and tell me how frustrated they are, I tell them how frustrated I am, we sigh and moan together on the verge of tears as even more Widgets pile up and the thought we are now fighting a losing battle.

I just do my best to keep calm, but at times it is difficult. So I wonder and ask have we really put too much reliance in IT systems?  Because I'm beginning to think so. They have put people out of jobs and they have supposedly made us more efficient in what we do. We do things faster, but not necessarily better. There is no love in the work which is done, it is as someone said to me, box shifting. A thing which idiots do. Then when all things wonderful and IT decides to break down, we really do look like idiots.  Idiots with fat arses and piles of donoughts.