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High Tech Hell

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Los Angeles Metro Rail E-Line Train

Yesterday, I took the E-Line train to downtown Los Angeles, encountering on the way a whole slew of tech gremlins that threatened to put the kibosh on the trip.

To begin with, I parked my car at the Expo Bundy station lot. Payment was by credit card at a parking machine which featured an LCD screen. Since Los Angeles summers are extremely bright, and the sun was shining onto the screen, I had to guess what the machine was trying to tell me. Eventually, I made it through the process—even though, for some reason, the system did not remember the car license plate number associated with my TAP card.

Then I had to go through the turnstile. Whoops! The system didn’t recognize my TAP card, so I had to sneak a free ride on MetroRail. After spending time at the Central Library, I took a DASH bus to Union Station, close by the headquarters of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). They checked my card, told me I still had $2.00 in stored value on my card, and added an additional $20.00 at my request.

I had tried to re-charge my TAP card the day before in Santa Monica, but “the system is down,” so I was directed to a machine at the Santa Monica MetroRail station. Of course, it was down.

Whatever happened to those days when high tech held such promise? Now doing simple everyday things lead to unwelcome interactions with badly designed machines programmed by people who have no idea how to interact with a human being. Did no one ever think of checking that LCD screens are illegible in direct sunlight? Did no one think at all?

A Punk Technology

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Provided That the Sun Isn’t Shining

Every time I have to interact with a parking meter or pay machine, I dread in advance what I will encounter. For some quixotic reason I have not been able to determine, the City Fathers of LA have decided to go with Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) on their parking meters and pay machines. Perhaps they have forgotten the fact that the sun frequently shines in Southern California, making the LCD screens totally illegible.

A similar issue occurs with the display screen in my car, which activates when I am backing up. At night, there is no problem. When the rays of the sun are not hitting the screen, there is no problem. But when the sun’s rays are streaming onto the screen, I might as well be looking at a blank screen. The pity of it all is that the backup camera is a good idea. It’s just that the execution is stinko.

Modern technology has yet to come up with a small display screen that is equally legible in sunlight and in shade.

Part of the problem is that as a culture we have become addicted to tiny screens. When I sit in my library wearing my reading glasses, Martine will pop in and indicate a problem on the LCD screen on our land line. The only problem is that I am wearing my reading glasses, and she is standing more than ten feet away. Or else someone hands me a smart phone when I am wearing my distance glasses. In each case, the display is meaningless to me.

Oh, I suppose I could wear bifocals, but then I would have to hold my head at a certain prescribed angle when I am reading and at a different angle when I am admiring the distant scenery.