Column Title: The Update That Never Ends

You ever feel like you spend more time updating your devices than actually using them? Every morning, it’s the same story: the phone lights up, politely informing me that a “critical update” is available, as if the world might come to an end if I don’t drop everything and download immediately. But then, halfway through the update, the screen freezes, or the battery drains, leaving me stranded in a no-man’s land of “improvements” that somehow make everything worse.

As a hopeless techie, I get excited by the idea of updates, believing each one will make my device faster, smarter, maybe even a bit more intuitive. But, much like waiting for a perfect cup of coffee that never quite turns out right, my hope quickly turns to disillusionment. Updates often feel like a gamble—you never know if your phone will reboot with an exciting new feature or decide it’s no longer on speaking terms with your favorite apps.

Take last week, for example. My laptop cheerfully alerted me to a “necessary system update,” so I complied, fully expecting a quick reboot. Instead, I found myself staring at an endless spinning wheel as if my laptop had slipped into some sort of digital coma. What was supposed to take “just a moment” turned into a 30-minute ordeal, with my laptop stubbornly refusing to come back to life. Eventually, I was forced to perform a hard restart, and when it finally revived, the screen layout was all wrong, the battery life had mysteriously halved, and half my desktop icons had vanished into thin air.

And let’s not even get started on the endless notifications from apps reminding me that they, too, need an update. You’d think the fate of the universe hinged on me upgrading to version 12.7.1 of my weather app, which now includes “enhanced rain alerts” that buzz at random times. Funny, back in the day, I didn’t need an app to tell me it was raining—I just looked out the window. But these days, every app has become a needy toddler, tugging at my sleeve with notifications and updates, each one vying for attention like a digital soap opera.

There’s also the mystery of battery drain, which, after each update, seems to accelerate. It’s as if these “enhancements” require such intense power that even the smallest tasks—checking an email, setting an alarm—now cost me 10% of my battery life. I remember a time when gadgets were content to last all day, with no mid-afternoon scramble to find an outlet. Now? I’m the proud owner of a portable battery pack, lugged around as a modern survival tool.

At times like these, I think about what the Luddites would make of our endless update cycle. They resisted new machinery with a passion, fighting against the relentless churn of change, and I have to believe they’d find our obsession with constant “improvement” a little absurd. So here’s today’s “Note from the Luddites” on the modern cycle of updates:

“If a tool works, why must it change? We used a thing until it broke, then repaired it as best we could. Updating it daily seems wasteful, and to what end? Perhaps a tool that needs so much ‘improvement’ is less of a tool and more of a burden.”

The wisdom of simpler times! Here we are, bombarded by updates and upgrades, each promising smoother, faster, better—while dragging us further from the peace we hoped technology might bring. Maybe there’s a lesson in this relentless cycle of change: sometimes, it’s okay to hit “remind me later” and just let things be.

So, next time you’re asked to update for the fifth time this week, take a deep breath and remember—you’re not alone in this digital tug-of-war.

And if all else fails, well, there’s always the option to reboot.