Back in the 80's, I was enroute to some Elsewhere or another and engaged in casual conversation with a fellow air traveler. He made the comment that he had complete confidence in modern airplanes because "they're flown by computers nowadays".
 
At the time, I was a computer fix-it guy who spent his days facing down broken computers and who witnessed them routinely taking down entire companies when they misbehaved. Hardware was pretty reliable, but software was always the wild card. It did not comfort me in the slightest that the machine I'd entrusted with my life was "flown by computers".
 
At the time, the Internet was in its infancy and was primarily a toy for us techno-geeks to share knowledge. SPAM was still a Monty Python sketch, and it was rare to get an email from somebody you didn't know. Computer security meant a lock on the computer room door. Computers and networks remained the domain of nerds, who might cause problems due to excessive curiosity and self-confidence but never ruined anyone's life.
 
Porn ruined everything. It brought big money, and big money brought shady characters. Identity theft, scams and cons soon followed. We nerds, in our hubris believed we could fight back with technology. SMTP became ESMTP. Encryption went to 128 bits. Network connections went virtual. Anti-virus software became as standard as email. Public pressure forced Microsoft to institute draconian security measures so restrictive that some software failed to even run.
 
But all along, it never even occurred to us that computerizing every aspect of the human experience, even when it wasn't needed, was the root problem. We just didn't know when to stop. Not because we wanted to see where technology could take us, but because there was money to be made. Not because a computer wouldn't lose your bag at the airport, but because it could get your bag to the carousel faster - even if that carousel was in the wrong city.
 
The computer in your car can make sure you shift gears at the right time, assure the right air/fuel ratio, and warn you when your air filter's clogged. But it also makes it possible for an evildoer to remotely kill your car as you barrel down the freeway. And, as it turns out, allows something as basic as the key you use to open the door and start the car to fail.
 
Check out this article, which tells how thieves stole 100 new cars using only a laptop. Note that these guys were just a couple of street thugs, not software engineers. They got the software and instructions via the internet. The same miracle connection that let me meet other coders in 1988 now instructs know-nothing kids on bomb-making, hacking (once a noble art), scams and thievery.
 
Sure, it still serves its original purpose, too. It lets us share knowledge here on this forum, and I wouldn't want to give that up. But do we really need to relinquish every decision, to trust every aspect of our lives to software? Do we really need microprocessors in our toasters, to have a network connection to our refrigerators? Do we want to trust voting machines that we already know can be manipulated? To leave it to software to decide when a nuclear power plant is about to blow?
 
There is currently a call for modernizing the nuclear launch mechanism. Personally, I'm glad it still relies on 1980's technology.
 

Excellent topic!
 
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Turn your key sir!
TURN YOUR KEY!

I'm with you Bit - as long as they can maintain the current missile systems then the risks for creating an entirely new system far outweigh any benefits.

All I know is, up until the late '80's I managed a sign manufacturing company doing a £1,000,000 annual turnover armed with some A4 notebooks, a tape measure and occasionally a polaroid camera.
 
We had a couple of Apple IIe's for running CNC routers and the like, but business was conducted by telephone and fax machine. If I went out, I wasn't contactable until I got back to the office. This was rarely a problem.
 
I used to drive all over the country, regularly around London, and to this day I have never used GPS or SatNav. If I'm going somewhere I haven't been before, I look at a map first, and road signs when I get there.
 
I do use a computer for my gardening business, spreadsheets for the accountant, and printing invoices. I could just as easily do those by hand if necessary.

I'm a rebel too.  My cell phone is dumb and stays in my vehicle most of the time.  With a dead battery.
 
As for the missiles?  We don't need the missiles at all, much less modernized versions.  I used to ride around underwater with 160 nuke warheads and a nuke power plant.  Meh.  Strategic scale weaponry is sooooo 80s.  We have much greater need for tactical tools to fight our battles.  Everybody worries about this politician or that having access to "the button".  Never mind the fact that that is a gross oversimplification of how it works, the real solution is to not have "the button".
 
I agree about toasters and refers and such.  A lot of my buying decisions are based on having fewer things to go wrong.
 
What were we talking about again?
 

I get the point being made here but there is no denying that my business is made 1000x easier with automation. My life would be so much harder without email, smartphones, calendars I can share with employees, automated invoices I can email, online payment, notes and spreadsheets I can keep in the cloud and sync across devices etc. God knows how much paper I'd be using otherwise, and as someone who has a little OCD and whose brain doesn't work if surrounded by mess and clutter, being able to replace reams of paper and notebooks and the like with one neat little device that sits on my impeccably tidy desktop is a huge psychological boost even without the practical benefits. 

I do not have a mobile phone, I was using it so infrequently that I kept losing it, or the battery would go flat.
 
I guess it depends what you are doing, when I was a PC tech, on 24hr callout, I used to live by a phone, as did the people I was dealing with, everybody was running around in circles chasing their tails, trying to be super efficient, real rat race city stuff.
 
Now with what I do, its all face to face stuff, with any changes to times getting sorted out days to weeks in advance.
 
I have a tablet I have an android tablet I have not used in 3 months or more, possibly 6 months, and even when I was using it, it was for reading technical books.
 
My current rule is that internet is desktop computer only, and all phone calls go to a wall phone, and if I am not near either of them when somebody tries to contact me, they will just have to wait.
 
However, life without a microwave would be challenging, it has to be best invention in my life time I think.

I want to get some Wi-Fi ligtbulbs so I can call my lights from my phone:
 

 
 

 
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