Hmmm, will I be trapped in the dark and gloomy digital dungeon for all time?
Ask a group of friends what their greatest fear is and they will likely cite one or more life or death situations. Ask me that question and the answer will be: Getting hopelessly lost in the digital dungeon and never finding my way out.
Everywhere I turn these days I have to do battle with online systems or the guts of digital devices. Applying for retirement pensions, product registrations, set-up or troubleshooting a mobile phone or laptop or wireless printer. Every time I have to do one such thing I half-expect to be sucked into the bowels of the system through a phantom portal with no escape route.
It is not unlike the series Star Trek: Voyager where Captain Janeway’s starship is sucked into a black hole, spit out in the Delta Quadrant on the other side of the galaxy and condemned to roam for years trying to find the way home. My every foray into an online system or digital device feels like one wrong menu selection away from falling prey to a black hole.
Within a minute or two of accessing these systems or devices, I am disoriented and at a loss what to do. The instructions in the online User’s Manual or How To page are like a foreign language to me. The screen illustrations included in them never seem to match what I am actually seeing and are of no use to me.
Invariably, after one or two tentative screen taps or clicks, I stumble into an area I do not want be in and do not know how to exit. There is no such thing as a Back Button to rescue me. The more I flounder around the deeper I get into sucked in and the more damage I do. My only option is to shut down and hope the system lets me out.
I feel like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit as he enters the Smaug the Dragon’s lair in The Lonely Mountain looking for the Arkenstone in a mountain of jewels and gemstones. In my case, the Arkenstone is the magical and elusive solution to my problem which lies somewhere beneath layers and layers and layers of technical jargon and dead ends.
I hear the digital Smaug proclaiming: Hah! Got you now, digital incompetent. There is no escaping the labyrinth of my lair. No black arrow for you. Feel my fury!
Attempting to use the system or company tech support is just wandering into another dungeon. The techies one-third my age ask me questions I do not understand. They assume I have a basic level understanding of the technology which I never do. I can sense them fuming at their end: What a dolt! I don’t get paid enough to deal with idiots like this guy.
On the rare occasion that I actually manage to get where I need to be or do the setup I need to do or solve the problem I have, I have hopelessly messed up two or more other functions in the process and am further behind than when I started.
I expect that my obituary will read something like this:
Last seen entering the digital dungeon and heard cursing like a drunken sailor. Assumed to be lost forever. Celebration of Life next Saturday unless the system spits him out half alive before then.
~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .
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Tags: Arkenstone · black hole · Delta Quadrant · digital dungeon · Lonely Mountain · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · Star Trek: Voyager · The HobbitNo Comments