Tuesday, May 10, 2005

When technology is not the answer

Although I work in technology, I strongly believe that technology is not always the answer. When used properly, technology is powerful and helpful. But sometimes, it can be overapplied, and when technology is used for technology's sake alone, it just isn't helpful.

This is just a general feeling and related to a general belief in approaching like with simplicity. But I'd like to begin to collect real world examples. They can be small or big, but some concrete examples of when technology was not the answer.

Ok, first one I can think of is small. I've seen this in several offices. The "old" way of reserving a meeting room was to put a piece of paper on the door and people would "sign up" for a time. Then many offices moved to scheduling their conference rooms with Outlook. Many people don't even understand how to do that, but really what's not effective about this is that if you want to have an impromptu meeting, you go to the room but never know if it has been reserved or not, or who reserved it. Seems simpler to me to just post the piece of paper on the door.