I use technology. This column was written on a "tablet" and submitted via e-mail over the Internet on which I checked my luddicious facts. But I don't tweet, follow Twitter or text. I toot, but only at some idiot who is texting when the light turns green and he just sits there. I don't own a cell phone. (My wife has one, but just for emergencies.) Who would I call? I don't like talking on the telephone — I'm practically deaf! As I work at home I don't need to communicate other than yelling down the stairs, "Hey, is lunch ready yet?"

Having just finished writing a section of one of my texts on cyber hacking, I know precisely what hazards the "well-connected technocrat" faces when some hacker in Outer Slabovia steals his identity. A hacking attack is not just a possibility — it is a probability, and when all computers go down at once, don't look on the back porch for a carrier pigeon. We did away with those 50 years ago.

Impolite visitors

Nothing irritates me more than guests who visit our home and sit with their nose in an I-gadget, or constantly interrupt a conversation when their cellphone jangles. It happens at church, in concerts, lectures, the supermarket, and any time my wife's nieces and nephews visit. Their whole visit is spent playing with their gadgets. Are children not taught manners any longer?

Even in stores, as I approach a counter to ask about a product, the clerk will be on her cellphone gabbing with a friend. Does her boss know? Social media costs the economy billions in productivity annually. A survey of Harvard Business School alumni found that nearly half would prefer using technology rather than hire people to do the same work.

Unnatural persons

In preparing a course on Florida law and ethics I was amazed to learn that under Florida Statute §626.866 the all-lines adjuster qualifications read, "1. Natural person of at least 18 years of age…." I wondered. How could an adjuster not be a "natural" person? Then I recalled one of my first columns in this publication entitled "I. M. Fair, CPU," a prediction penned in 1979 warning of the technological revolution that would reduce claims adjusting to one big mainframe computer with lots of robotics, voice recognition and artificial intelligence. If a robot could do an adjuster's work (and somewhere somebody is already probably programming one to do exactly that), then thank goodness that Robbie the Robot can't be licensed, at least in Florida, as an all-lines adjuster; Robbie isn't a "natural person."

Technology is great, but when it steals our ability to think and reason for ourselves, and can do our work at a fraction of the cost without employee benefits, vacations, or sick days, then those of us in the claims vocation have become irrelevant and unneeded, in short, unemployed. Oh, Ned, where is your ax when we need it!