A rchive Date
[ 26-10-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2644017,00.html
Americans in the slow lane
By Paul Somerson, Smart Business
October 24, 2000 5:57 AM PT
It's a dirty little secret, but here goes: We're powerless. And pitiful. We think we're such edgy technological hotshots, but the truth is that we always seem to let things get screwed up. Especially when it comes to moving ourselves and our information around.
Examples? We can't build planes that fly faster than they did 30 years ago, and when we try, we make them so flimsy a blown tire can knock them out of the sky. We've let deregulation spawn a nasty hub-and-spoke system that creates regional price-gouging monopolies, forces time-wasting connections, and guarantees that delays anywhere will eventually ripple through to bite you.
We shrug it off when airlines cram us into seats with less personal space than 17th-century slave ships, feed us slop, and filter out the fresh air. We accept daily delays because there aren't enough runways or gates, the result of lawsuits from dingbats who live near airports and complain about noise, which should make all of you want to put huge bullhorns in their bedrooms and scream, "If you don't like noise, then don't get a house next to the friggin' airport!"
We waste millions of hours each year commuting in perpetual gridlock, because loopy, car-hating eco-crazies (led by Al Gore) have convinced regulators that if you build more roads, more cars will use them, which is somehow a bad thing.
We assign high-definition slots to TV stations, which instead use them to pump out VCR-quality reruns of Hee Haw. Half the world has never made a phone call, and the other half is probably stuck right now in voice-mail jail.
The United States is the weak sister when it comes to this technology. Germany beats us on safe, fast roads. Japan and Finland (Finland!) on telephones, Europe and the Middle East on TV quality, France and Japan on trains, and Europe on smart cards.
This is maybe the most maddening thing of all. Even the small stuff is out of control.
Why should we have to stuff our wallets with dozens of credit and ID cards? We should be able to carry just one smart card that does it all.
Why do we have to pay 20 or 30 bills each month instead of a single combined one that's presented to us then deducted from our bank account effortlessly?
Why do we have so many bank accounts, with their cockamamie restrictions, under-insurance, and rampant fees, instead of just one?
Why do we have so many phone numbers with home phones, business phones, faxes, cell phones, car phones, 800 numbers, and more, when all we really need is one number that follows us around?
Why do we Americans have to worry about so many cell-phone standards, which are holding us back from the next-generation high-speed connections, when we should really have just one?
Why do we end up with lots of e-mail mailboxes that are often tough to sort out and synchronize, instead of just one?
Why do we deck ourselves out with all sorts of pocket gizmos of dubious quality when all we really need is one that does it all? (A recent review chirped, "This new WAP phone is great! Except that it's slow, it's hard to input text on the numeric keypad, and the screen is small and dark." Wow! I want one!)
Ditto with one password that's easy to change everywhere, one worldwide street address system, one phone number system, and eventually one worldwide language and currency system.
OK, there are kludgy ways to do some of this stuff, and they sorta sometimes work, but too often they become science projects, are daunting to set up, and end up being usability nightmares. It's as if we're still all hobbyists with lots of time on our hands to fiddle with this insanity.
Choice is great, but sometimes it can be overwhelming and counterproductive. These days it's often better to have just one way.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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