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Keep those tech-savvy relatives handy

By Jean-Claude Elias - Jul 11,2019 - Last updated at Jul 11,2019

Do you have around you a relative who is tech-savvy enough and available to help you when the going gets tough on the bumpy road to using technology? Someone who is able to take the mystery out of your new Chromecast HDMI adapter and let you enjoy that Netflix movie tonight? Someone who can tell if the Internet suddenly is not working anymore because of a hardware breakdown, of an electric failure, a device malfunction, or simply because of something you have (unintentionally, of course) done while tampering with the multiple settings of the system?

Most everybody needs technical support at some point in their life. Whatever the problem or the product you have trouble with, calling customer support on the phone, when and if available, often leads to more frustration than solutions. Having a real, professional technician come over to your house to help takes time, money, and often is not worth it just to solve “that little problem with the wifi router”.

This is where a tech-minded son, a daughter, a cousin, a sibling, or any relative you can reach out to, can help in a practical, friendly manner. Of course friends also qualify, but unless they happen to be very close and very dear friends, you would rather ask someone from within the family instead of bothering your friends.

Over the last few years, makers of computer software and hardware of all kinds have put commendable effort to make their products as user-friendly, as easy to use and as reliable as possible. Given the complexity of the products and the fact that they are changed, improved, upgraded all the time, one must admit that, all things considered, the industry has done a good job, overall.

And yet, problems still often occur, questions need to be answered, and the “how do I..?” situation remains valid all the time. And no, YouTube tutorials and other similar answers you may find on the web by searching yourself do not work, for most of the time. The reason for that is very simple: you still have to be a little tech-minded yourself to be able to carry out such a search, not to mention to understand what that cryptic YouTube tutorial video you finally found really means, and how to apply the suggested solution!

Whether ethical or not, whether legal or not, being able to choose your child gender is possible today, scientifically speaking, and is the subject of heated debates in most countries in the world. Apparently you can also pick up other attributes such as the colour of the eyes, and so forth.

However, instead of trying to choose the gender or other physical traits, perhaps physicians and scientists should be conducting research to make “genetically IT tech-savvy” babies instead. This way, and given the importance of the subject, every family will be blessed with instantly available technical support at home. Who then would still need to call customer service on the phone?

Pure fantasy? Doomsday or nightmare scenario? Crazy science fiction? Maybe it is. But is it really any crazier than how the concepts of smartphones, global wireless networks, high-definition streaming video or biometric identification would have sounded to the population some thirty or forty years ago?

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