{"id":29989,"date":"2019-08-23T21:43:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-24T02:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29989"},"modified":"2019-08-23T21:43:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-24T02:43:53","slug":"briefly-broken-key-reminds-me-how-much-were-at-the-mercy-of-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29989","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Broken key reminds me how much we\u2019re at the mercy of technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m stuck at my office at 9 p.m. on a Friday night. I can\u2019t start my car. I can\u2019t get to dinner. I can\u2019t get home. And it\u2019s all because a tiny piece of metal broke at the wrong time. I was heading out to show a house to a woman about 3 p.m. Friday when my key broke off in the ignition. It was annoying, but the car started, so I thought I would deal with it later. The car had other ideas, though. Now I\u2019m waiting for a locksmith who\u2019s going to charge me $165 to make a new transponder key. That\u2019s frustrating, but everybody has faced similar issues. What\u2019s the point? As the world gets more complicated, there are more and more points of failure. In my case, a piece of metal broke and that smashed a plastic device, somehow making a tiny chip no longer function. Modern life can be great, but this reminds me that we\u2019re often better off keeping things simple, especially where technology is concerned. If something can break, it eventually will. Were we better off before technology got so complicated? As with most things, it\u2019s a tradeoff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m stuck at my office at 9 p.m. on a Friday night. I can\u2019t start my car. I can\u2019t get to dinner. I can\u2019t get home. And it\u2019s all because a tiny piece of metal broke at the wrong time. I was heading out to show a house to a woman about 3 p.m. Friday Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-briefly","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7NH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29989"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29993,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29989\/revisions\/29993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}