Tag Archives: Technology

We Appreciate Your Business

Thank you for calling the blank-blank-blank. All of our associates/agents/technicians are currently serving other customers. We appreciate your business. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. In the … Continue reading

Posted in Laughing Frequently, Management and Work | Tagged | 6 Comments

We Know Where That Information Is

Have you seen a blue binder? From his glassed-in perch, the bulldozer operator frowns for a moment at the note in his hand, looks down suspiciously at the guy with the mop of curly hair who is looking up at … Continue reading

Posted in Laughing Frequently, Management and Work | Tagged | 8 Comments

How Long Has it Been?

Thanks to databases and nifty analytics, targeted advertising is almost magic. But nothing is perfect, as some notable clunkers make clear.   Isabel: University of Ottawa I glance at the apparently personalized subject line on the email from my professional … Continue reading

Posted in Thinking Broadly, Wired | Tagged | 12 Comments

There’s An App (er, Site) For That

A chance observation of a billboard for a personal-injury law firm launches deep thought (OK, maybe just a rant) about personal injuries and website proliferation. Injured in a hotel? If a billboard can blare, this one does. Injured in a … Continue reading

Posted in Laughing Frequently, Wired | Tagged | 9 Comments

One of 55 Million

Ten years ago, on 14 August 2003, and less than two years after 9/11, a power outage affected 45 million people in eight US states and 10 million people in Ontario. There were 55 million stories in the darkened cities. … Continue reading

Posted in New Perspectives, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Computer Illiteracy

The inherent challenge of relying on a machine so complex that I neither understand it nor can repair/maintain it.   Waking at zero-dark-hundred, I see the glow of the screen in the otherwise darkened room: my computer is quietly defragging … Continue reading

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One for the Road

Anthropomorphizing our GPS would be unreasonable if she weren’t really a person. Continue reading

Posted in Laughing Frequently, New Perspectives | Tagged , | 10 Comments