Technology Mistakes and Climate Change

 

"Great computer speakers.”

“Thanks. I got them for Christmas.”

Technology has its pros and cons. Kids are experts on the subject. Ask your teen daughter. She has only ‘cool’ things to say about technology.

Technology has always been there, and the proof is in your basement. Go down there and have a good laugh. We are more conscious of it now, because of the accelerated speed. New product today, it’s outdated after a year. 

No problem. We’ll throw out yesterday’s headphones for digital ones. Recycle them? Not on your life. But product development is not the only culprit responsible for climate change.  It is tech mistakes.

Example. Your first home desk had skyscrapers like hard drives. Let’s not forget the printer. Today it has one tenant, the laptop. However, it is another good example of things that contribute to climate change.

Once upon a time, we said goodbye to the keyboard because tech companies decided to embed it inside the machine. They also got rid of the mouse. It couldn’t scurry around any more, looking for food because technology imprisoned it inside the laptop below the keyboard.

Travel light. I think that was the idea, make computers easy to take on the road and the plane. It took us some time to learn how to drive the inbuilt mouse, especially the left and right click. I guess someone took notice and missed mickey mouse.

All’s well that ends well. You can buy a separate keyboard and mouse for your laptop. It was a tech mistake and it cost us the environment. We cannot bring back the mice and keyboards we threw away.

I’m sure Digital Trends has more examples of tech mistakes that have been corrected.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.