In A Handful Of Dust Book Giveaway and our technoligical plight

In the wake of Apple’s new watch unveiling, I got sucked into a world wide web of articles on technology. Eventually, my browsing led me to a story about autonomous driving and how easy it would be to hack the systems of these newest toys-in-the-making

Is anyone else troubled by the abundance of technology in our lives? Does anyone else pine for the pioneer days when you lived by your own doing and died by your own poor choices and laziness? Does anyone besides me think that having a lazy human behind the wheel of a vehicle is a bad idea?

I mean, seriously, one article boasted how the automatic system would hand over the controls to the driver if the car got into trouble it couldn’t handle alone, such as slamming on its brakes to avoid hitting a car in front of it. I don’t know about you, but braking seems like a pretty fundament part of driving. Needless to say, I see a huge flaw in this:

• The driver relinquished control for a reason: he doesn’t want to pay attention to the mundane task of driving.
• By applying logic, this means he is no longer an attentive driver of the vehicle, but rather a passive passenger sitting in front of the steering wheel.
• Inattention requires time before reaction: said driver must be alerted to a problem via the car, he must then assess why the distress signal has been sent, then he must determine what needs to be done to avoid the peril of smashing into the car that just swerved into his lane.
• By my calculation, way too much time has elapsed to allow the now-panicked driver to avoid the crash when Rosie the Robot could have simply stomped on the brakes solo.
• Ie: autonomous cars seem MORE dangerous.
• When you add up the time and financial costs of the wreck for rear-ending another car, Mr. Lazy Driver has wasted vast resources when he could have simply set his cruise and crooned to the radio–with hands on wheel, eyes on road and foot poised near the brake–during his morning commute.

Suddenly, autonomous driving doesn’t sound so convenient after all. Well, it never did… News flash: I like being in control of my own life. I don’t want 1984 to come to fruition. I like independent thinking and acting. I like making decisions and living with the consequences.

I don’t want to reside in a dystopian world unless it is one I’m reading about. Big Brother is for fiction. Or, at least, it used to be.

Throw in those hackers I was talking about, and I see chaos to the max. Pray tell, where do I sign up?

Not with Apple. I am not ready for personal technology that is controlled by private companies, can be shared with the government and stolen by hackers. I’ll keep my pulse to myself and get in my own car accidents, thank you.

I will also continue to read survival novels by author Mindy McGinnis, where nature is a force to be reckoned with, technology is limited. and human interactions are tenuous at best. In a Handful of Dust is due to hit  bookshelves on September 23, 2014. It’s the companion novel to her debut novel, Not a Drop to Drink.

Follow me to Mindy’s blog to save on your e-copy of Drink (a steal at $1.99) and to enter a chance to win one of five free copies of Dust!

What kinds of technology can’t you live with, and what can’t you live without? How do you feel about technology driven novels?

Curious minds want to know.

Death of a Computer

Friday morning I hopped on the net and began searching for a Garmin and key fob homing device for my dyslexic son’s, impending sixteenth birthday.  You know, so he can find his way back home after driving up town to get some milk? 

I walked away from my computer for the briefest of times (about 35 minutes) and when I returned, my computer screen had a Death!  Corruption!  End of Life as We Know It! message. 

Love when that happens.  All my blogging.  All my writing.  My emails, my work and my keep-for-seven-years-under-punishment-of-death files are gone.  Along with the heart and brains of my computer.

All I have left is a black screen with my Death Message.

Insert CD and restart your computer from the set up menu.

DUH, my computer doesn’t have a CD rom.  You would think a computer would know this about itself. 

And my dinosaur computer can’t be moved because I fear disrupting the delicate winding of the cord around the base so it can have power.  Nor can it be moved to actually function on any time remotely like the kind that real humans must operate on.  Some days it doesn’t boot up at all.  Other times I takes an entire day just to pull up the internet.  Typing can drain the patience of a saint, as only some letters show up sometimes. 

So, I will keep posting as often as my dinosaur allows until I either replace my new-old computer or get to the bottom of the death message.

Til then, hugs and may your muse be with you!