Technology we don't need

Have you seen those commercials that show how great technology is and how it's revolutionizing American business? Have you ever noticed how completely untrue that is? Amex has some guy on now bragging about how he invented, or sells, or owns (or something) the company that makes Blackberry pagers. Of course, now the blackberry pager is a pager, phone, pda, and a few other impressive-sounding but entirely useless things. Wow, executives can now make important decisions in this ever-changing economy on a moments notice...or make monumentally stupid ones on a moments notice. I saw that commercial the other day and thought it was an ad for a sitcom. Yes, it was that funny. There aren't 5 companies in the entire United States that need that kind of portable power.

Here's how it really works:

CEO goes to a conference to learn something new, but really just takes a few days out of town on the company dime to goof off. CEO sees other CEOs playing with new toy. CEOs trade lies about how "indispensable" new toy is and invent reasons why they need it. Usually it's just an excuse to be totally ill-prepared at all times and make their employees drop everything to cater to their silly requests. CEO goes home and orders new toy, actually using about 5% of it's potential. I try to order tapes to backup the network and get turned down because there's no money in the budget. It's understandable, though, since the company spent 1,500 dollars on a battery-powered address book for the Boss.

Don't laugh, I'm not writing a sitcom either.