Posted On: Friday - June 23rd 2017 7:27PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity Orwellian Stupidity Healthcare Stupidity iEspionage
Yeah, welcome to the Orwellian world of
Was anything really wrong with the old machine, on the left that didn't say a damn thing when you sat down on it? There are 3 LED readouts, Systolic BP, Diastolic BP, and pulse rate, and a GREEN button (START, yes), and a RED button (STOP, hey this is easy.) Sit down, do it - don't like the high reading? do it again, relax try it until the wife is done shopping. Finished? Leave. Nice and relaxing, remember the average or best reading. Next time, we'll see if it's stable, or a good bit better, or a good bit worse.
Then, the monstrosity on the right moved in and displaced the simple machine to blood-pressure-monitor heaven. OK, 2 screens here, and the bottom, touch screen needs some information. The top's for advertising. This device has got a scale too, so whatdya want done, sir? "Blood pressure, ya POS, I've got a scale at home." "Are you a guy or a gal?" Choose by picture. Whoaaah, are they gonna have to update this software before a lawsuit comes - no 32 flavors of gender - couldn't you do that by picture? (I've got that part, no none of those, but I identify with that weirdo picture there ... I digress.) Birthdate, now**. OK, it's gonna do the job now. "Are you really ready?" "Just DO IT!" - man, now how am I going to get a good reading. BP is shooting through the roof ... then the woman's voice comes out of the speaker "relax, put your mind at ease ... kinda like a massage therapist, in a way ..." "Hey, wait", I thought, "what else does this machine do?" I looked for round openings in the control panel ... Nada.
It gets done, and you get nice graphics of three meters with the needles rotating around to your values. OK, that's kind of cool, but Precision ain't Accuracy. It's probably just as accurate as the old machine, but anyway, now you can do a "Redo" (pick that!) or "Continue" will make you enter stuff over again. Your readings can be saved (well they probably are already at higi-headquarters, for some 100-year old gal that I'm supposed to be**) on a jump-drive or emailed to your inbox. Woohoo! How 'bout I just remember the readings for next time, and you let me leave outta here?
OK, this is the curmudgeon part. People that don't mind at all any big company or government, pretty much the same thing, know anything they want about them probably think this is great. "I get charts emailed to me showing my progress. It tells me what to do each step, like my phone. Cool!" Drugstore News says it's helping people LOWER their blood pressure via lots of data for guidance). Fine. It's just a different world, and that's the world they are used to. Me, I'm not about to give you all this info, just on principle, and I always liked the KISS idea in design - Keep It Simple, Stupid. As mentioned in other posts under the Curmudgeonry topic key, just because something CAN be done, doesn't mean I want it.
After multiple "sessions" with this machine, I have at least gotten more relaxed during the actual blood-pressure measurement (the whole point of it), possibly due to the computer-generated woman's soothing voice. I wish I could put a face and a nice body to it though, but I looked up on the big top display screen and it had an ad for Aspirin. I guess she's not in the mood for anything special.
* Yes, there is a camera near eye level. What for?
** No, of course I don't give any real information. In fact I enter in different stuff every time. The data crunchers out in higi-headquarters are probably pleased that a lot of 100 year old men and "gals" have been able to use their machines, with still just enough time left over, after entering all the data, to make it to the early-bird special at the cafeteria.
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