20 Things Technology Hasn't Made Easier

The perpetual forward march of technology is supposed to make our lives easier, and in many ways, it has. We can collaborate with co-workers across the country with the push of button, we can shop at stores in other countries by simply opening up a web browser, and our government can murder people without even stepping foot on enemy soil. Yes, we live in majestic times. Despite all of the wonderful improvements the come along with living in an Orwellian dystopia, there are still some things that just don't get any easier as time marches on. From simple, everyday tasks to deeply emotional milestones, there's just some stuff that we can't seem to improve upon. There are some household chores that we seem to have perfected in the 1800s and there are some interpersonal interactions that won't get better until the government gives us mandatory lobotomies to control our emotions. Take a moment away from the modern comfort and ease of online bill pay, e-commerce, and Grumpy Cat slide shows and consider these 20 Things Modern Technology Hasn't Made Easier.

Even that showoff girl who incorporated little flowers and smiley faces into her cursive signature didn't enjoy handwriting class. While penmanship wasn't our strongsuit, we fear that we aren't far from a world where non-verbal communication is impossible in the event of a power outage. Are we close to the written word becoming the previously-written word? The next generation will likely all have the handwriting of doctors and pharmacists, which will be bad enough, but the generation after that might have penmanship on par with Cro-Magnon man. Grocery lists and handwritten notes might just take the form of pictograms and historians will someday be deeply confused by the similarities between the written language of 23rd century and Ancient Egyptian culture. And worst of all, we will have perfected the flourishes in our uppercase cursive "Q" for naught.

When choosing a restaurant for dinner or a bar for happy hour, your crew used to be limited to the options that the group already knew of. With the help of the Internet, you can find options to argue about that you never knew existed. Now that we all have smartphones, we have the potential to debate every simple choice we make throughout our day. Something as commonplace as grabbing a cup of coffee can become grounds for intense research and debate. God forbid you are trying to plan an entire evening or a weekend getaway. You could read a Russian novel in the time it would take you to look through all of the options, let alone compare, contrast and analyze them in order to make the perfect decision. As everything becomes meticulously catalogued in searchable databases, we will soon be able to agonize over every decision we make throughout the day, no matter how insignificant.

Electric irons have been in existence since 1882, and the only real advancement we've figured out in the wrinkle killing business since then is the addition of crappy temperature controls that stop your iron from burning a hole through your favorite shirt. All you have to do to use this simple device is take ten minutes heating it up while awkwardly pouring water into it. What surface do you use? Well, you use an incredibly obnoxious long board with legs, of course! We would wonder why they just don't use wrinkle-free fabrics, but anyone who has bought crease resistant clothing knows that "wrinkle-free" really means "takes ever so slightly more work to wrinkle." We're not sure how we can do better, but to us, the easiest solution is just for us to stop caring if clothing is wrinkled.

Look at this device: a rubber suction cup with a wooden handle. This is the best we can do? If you really put something down there that you shouldn't, a plumber can swing by with a snake, but it is pretty ridiculous that the plunger is the best tool that most households have to deal with such a common problem. With the ridiculous, macho spins that we've seen on tools, kitchenware, and household cleaners, we feel that there is a ton of money being left on the table here. If some company made a turbo plunger that claimed to have double the effectiveness of your average plunger, they could probably print money. Actually, forget we said anything ... this might be just the thing to get us out of the Internet listmaking biz.

Physics isn't exactly our forte here at the Complex offices, but we have to believe that there has to be a better way to do this. The fact that we are in the twenty-first century and our vehicles can still be put our of comission by a stray nail is ridiculous. We don't exactly have a proposal, but there has to be a better answer right? When you do get a flat tire, your only option is to use a metal lever that can seriously damage your car if you're not careful. The rubber lobby has to be a powerful one, right? The Michelin Man's reach is perhaps further than we ever suspected.

With all the wonders of modern technology, how is a rake still the best available tool for the job? How is it that gas-powered mowers take roughly the same effort to push around the yard as 19th century reel mowers? Yeah, we know you can buy yourself a John Deere, but those aren't exactly the most practical tools for half-acre suburban yards. You would think that by now there would be some high-tech gadgets to help knock out some of that back breaking yard labor. Or would you? Our theory is that the slow advancements in yard work technology confirms for us what we've always known deep down: yard work is really about giving homeowners an excuse to spend large chunks of their weekend away from their family, lost in the zen-like repitition of hacking away at their freshly mulched yard with a garden hoe.

Thanks to stingy budgets and active lobbyists, any attempts at pushing transportation forward in this country are systematically crushed before than can become a line item in a budget. High speed rail? Who needs it? Electric cars? How would the oil companies make money? We need to have the same awful buses and gas guzzling cars we've had for decades. Don't be too cynical though. We have made some advances in the design of commuter vehicles. We've gotten great at putting ads over every square inch of buses and most cars can now be had with extra cup holders and built-in televisions.

How come local evening news looks just like it did twenty years ago? And why are they covering the same boring shit they were reporting back in the day? "Local Woman Wins Quilting Contest" and "Cat Rescued from Ditch" still get significant airplay, even though international news and varied perspectives are now at our finger tips thanks to social media. The only way that local news contributes to the national dialogue these days is through ridiculous YouTube clips like "Bed Intruder" and "Mobile, Alabama Leprechaun." While we have to admit we watched both videos dozens of times, we feel that this isn't exactly the content that journalists should aspire to be known for.

Shaving hasn't improved over the last century, you just have more choices. There has never been a closer shave than the leather strap and straight razor, but those desiring to spend a little less time for a little worse shave can pull out their Mach 3. If you are really in a hurry and don't mind spotty results, then an electric razor is for you. Don't worry, no matter how you decide to get the hair off of your face, you are going to cut yourself if you attempt to give yourself a close shave. Will razor companies ever improve on this? Probably not. But they will find a way to put a dozen blades on a razor in the next few years so you can get your same crappy shave in just three or four swipes across your face.

Have you ever seen a clip-on tie that didn't look like it belonged on an insurance salesman from the 1970s? How have we never found a better neckwear solution than the pain in the ass fabric-knot-around-the-neck after all these years? We are grateful that we don't have to wear the cravats and powdered wigs of our forefathers, but how is it that we haven't yet been given a self-tying tie or a clip-on that you can safely wear after your thirteenth birthday without fear of mockery?

No matter how many machines they invent, exercise doesn't get any easier. We suppose that's the point, but it is amazing to us that despite the sheer number of ridiculous contraptions that have been invented to get us in shape, the best of them get roughly the same results as free weights and running. This hasn't stopped the booming industry of infomerical workout equipment from thriving for decades; we're pretty sure that a sum of money equivalent to the GDP of Albania is spent every year on making more shitty ab machines that gather dust in parents' basements across the country.

Purchasing pretty much everything, from books to shoes, has become a simplified, streamlined process thanks to the Internet. Yet, for some reason, buying a car is still a ridiculous and complex endeavor. While one-off used car sales have become easier, buying from a dealer has remained as stressful and unfair a process as ever. Even if you come to a dealer armed with the CarFax and competitive pricing information, you are still forced to go through a negotiation stacked heavily in the dealer's favor. You have to deal with constant haranguing and gladhanding from the slaesperson only to come in at a price well above the lowest price that the lot is willing to offer. Of course, you can threaten to walk off, but then you come right back into another hour-long negotation that ends in pretty much the same place you ended up last time. It's enough to make you want to stick to the bus. Actually, no, no it isn't.

Oh, there are tons of websites out there where you can find jobs you don't want. Trust us, Monster, Career Builder, and all the rest are chock full of terrible gigs for you settle for when you finally compromise in the face of a hostile job market. The cool jobs are still held in the icy grip of nepotism and can only be unlocked through a series of deeply humbling internships and a severe amount of ass-kissing. If you don't have a well-connected uncle, then you'd best be prepared to network. You don't believe us? Okay, well, go ahead and update your LinkedIn profile so that all of your friends can be annoyed by yet another update that somehow made it past the spam filter.

As we become more and more connected digitally, it seems that meeting people in real life becomes exponentially more difficult. With our headphones firmly in-ear and our eyes locked on our screens, casual conversation has become an unwelcome intrusion. While we used to carry books, CDs and notebooks that could easily spark conversation, now we all carry shiny little black boxes that look more or less the same. The only way to guess if you have something in common with a random passerby is to read their t-shirt and hope it provides some clue to what they might be into. Or just hope that you can connect with them online.

Before all of you OKCupid! and Match.com fans arrive at our door with pitchforks and dating success stories, hear us out. Yes, getting dates has become a bit easier in the Internet age, but the actual act of dating has become much harder. What do you talk about on a date? Your interests? Oh, you mean all of the information that you already know about that person from their profile? You could mention your job, education or world view, right? Oh right, all of that information is on your profile too. Okay, then let me just check my phone real quick and see if there is anything interesting on the Internet that we can talk about ...

Sorry if we offend any meteorologists in the crowd, but how is it that we haven't gotten any better at this? The damn Farmer's Almanac is still just about as accurate as the Weather Channel. Despite the rise of satellites and the never-ending local news bragging about just how good their radar systems are, it still rains on the days we are told that we can definitely leave our umbrellas at home. The good news is that global warming is cutting down on the variety of weather, so eventually we won't have to worry about anything weather related except exactly how intense an SPF we should look for on that suntan lotion.

Yes, nutritional information has never been so readily available and stores like Whole Foods are bringing healthy foods to the suburban masses. The problem is that the customer is in an arms race with Corporate Food. Every time consumers find a new favorite food adjective, firms are quick to find loopholes that allow them to brand their genetically modified, hormone-packed food as "organic," "slow," or "green." We probably aren't far from seeing organic Oreos and locally grown Doritos hawked in health food stores. While we appreciate the amount of information out there warning us about how hard food conglomerates are screwing us, there just aren't enough hours in the day to watch every Morgan Spurlock wannabe's exposé on yet another corrupt corner of the food world. Besides, eating that much movie theatre popcorn would literally kill us.

Lying is a vital part of human existence, and it seems that it may soon go the way of the do-do. We already miss being able to lie about receiving phone calls and letters. Now our text messages and emails assure us that the other party got them. Trying to misrepresent yourself in hopes of getting laid? A quick Google search tells the woman of your dreams that you are not in fact the Archduke of Lichtenstein. The bottom line is that lying is way harder now than it was even five years ago. Will our children have to grow up in a world where they are limited by the firm, harsh boundaries of the truth? Will they be doomed to live the boring, mundane lives they've been handed at all times? We'll do everything we can to ensure that lying is still a possiblity in the future, but we're afraid it is going to be an uphill battle. It's quite possible that in the future lying will strictly be a province of corporations and nations, and citizens will be forced to speak only the truth.

There is an infinite amount of information available online. The only problem is that none of it is grammatically correct. We now live in a culture where you hit your grammatical peak when you get that hardass English teacher sophomore year of high school, and it all goes down hill from there. We write so poorly that even with built in spelling and grammar advice from our computers, we still manage to produce paragraphs that are unreadable. It wasn't long ago that the decline of grammar merely meant that our sentences were growing dull and flat. Now, if you're an adult who can write in complete sentences and manage not to toss in an LOL, you are officially in the running for Poet Laureate. At our current pace of grammatical decline, future generations will bemoan their children's lack of variety in emojis and English teachers will dock students points for failing to differentiate between "LOL" and its plural form, "lolz."