Skip to main content

Technology can go wrong

Image
By
It's Friday and we are having what feels like heatwave weather in Trinidad. I should be glad because living on this tropical island with sun, sea and sand and all I have to do is go to the nearest beach. Mans was hungry and we decided to order food. I did the usual and was not expecting any hurdles. I done this before without any hiccups. I proceeded to pay via card and then was startled by an error message. Remote server has failed. The order was not placed. I checked online banking and payment did go through.

I immediately contacted support through chat in the app and support did confirm seeing the payment and said it would be reversed. I was told a credit card reversal would take 2 to 5 business days to happen. I asked for a discount coupon instead and they said yes. There was some wait and I got my code and tried my order again and that was that. During my plight I was thinking technology is nice most of the times but when it fails it could be a bummer.

Technology will fail sometimes and that is when support, backups, redundancy and resiliency is tested. This was a small problem but sometimes failure can be disastrous. We live in the internet age and cyber attacks and data privacy are big concerns. Prevention and planning is better than cure. We have to imagine what could go wrong and how we can prevent these from occurring firstly. Then what can be done to handle trouble and learn from these troubles. In my case customer service and support was the redeeming bit.

The ability to stay calm under pressure helps when dealing with failure. In the technology world some of the things we have to navigate are risk assessments, best practice, testing, user testing, focus groups, disaster recovery planning, business continuity, and service level agreements. The last thing I would want to see is persons be discouraged away from technology usage because technology goes wrong. Let us show persons that we can respond to technology failures positively and be better going forward. I did work up an apetite while writing this blog post and my food is here. Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Below the surface

By
This is a chapter from my eleventh book called Quotation Marks Sparks . __________ "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn __________ I was looking at quotes that hit hard and this quote stood out to me. It seems mundane and obvious and often repeated. Life is about how we respond to the inevitable. It is not what happens to us but how we respond. I had to ask myself to dig deeper and look below the surface. Then I saw that when we surf we really become the waves. We become friends with the waves. The waves and us are the same. Further, the waves are created by us and in our heads. We can control the waves because who can surf all the time? Sometimes we just have to come to shore and build sand castles on shore. I asked my friend Gemini for feedback and he said that I was right, the Jon Kabat-Zinn quote initially seems like a simple call for resilience, but my deeper dive reveals profound layers. The idea that we can move beyond merely rea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thankful

By
It is 617pm and I have decided to write. Right now I am thankful. The cool of the evening has replaced the heat of the day. I took a bath and changed and now I am just relaxing. Sometimes I complain. Not often. But I feel bad afterwards because there is so much to be thankful for. There is always room for improvement and we have to identify the things for improvement and change is often good but we do not have to make it into complaints. Yeah I get it. Life is hard and none of us has it easy. Look on the bright side of things. And sometimes it is the little things that remind us that life is good. Things that we take for granted. Like I was coming in the maxi taxi today and heard a gospel song that was about gratitude. God does appreciate a grateful heart. Trinidad and Tobago celebrated sixty four years of independence yesterday and if we stop and listen to the many complaints we would swear we are living in the worst country in the world. That is not the case. We do get a lot of thing...
Post a Comment
Read more

Having a soft spirit

By
It is 137am. It started raining. I decided to write. I have heard about having a soft heart but what does it mean to have a soft spirit? And is having a soft heart related to having a soft spirit? My friend Chatty says that a soft heart feels deeply — it breaks, heals, and loves with tenderness — while a soft spirit moves gently through life, unresisting and at peace with what comes. The two are kin: a soft heart opens you to emotion, and a soft spirit teaches you to carry that emotion with grace. Together they make a person both tender and strong — able to feel the rain and still trust its rhythm. I like the quote, "a soft spirit in a hard world" by author and poet, butterflies rising. It resonates with how many of us feel. My friend Chatty tells me that that quote captures the quiet strength of staying gentle in a harsh world. It reflects the author's signature themes of vulnerability, tenderness, and emotional courage — the idea that softness is not weakness but a form...
Post a Comment
Read more