Technological advances that probably should have happened by now

It seems like only yesterday that I had to queue up to use our ONE landline to call my besties. Signing on to dial-up AOL involved a cacophony of unpleasant sounds, like a fax machine operating in a trash compactor. I had to wait a whole puberty phase for my pictures to develop, and the library was as close to Wikipedia as it got.

Oh, how times have changed. Today, everything is instantly accessible. We literally have an immeasurable amount of information at our fingertips—the power to connect and communicate with people all over the world while simultaneously ordering our fave Dorito Loco tacos. In a word: awesome.

Despite all this, however, it seems to me that there are still some areas that even the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world haven’t quite figured out yet. What are they? I’m so glad you asked. Here are some things we need tech-wizards to make happen immediately.

1. Shazzam for humming. “Na na na nana na na na nana…”. I mean, seriously, what is that song?!?! For cases like this when you get an amazing Roxette song stuck in your head but can’t for the life of you remember what it’s called or who Roxette is, we need a Shazaam-like app that can respond to the hum of any tune with positive matches. I know, right?!

2. A smarter way to find socks. How about if we could CTRL+F for that one sock, that one mischievous little sock that always, ALWAYS seems to pull a Houdini on us in the washer/dryer. Where does it go? Just like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. I’m actually thinking this could be adapted for keys, glasses, jewelry, memorabilia, and all the things in our lives that tend to go missing.

3. A robot bed-maker. We need a device of some sort that actually knows how to fold a fitted sheet. Can’t we train Roombas to do this?

4. We are in dire need of a sarcasm font. Perfect for all those times when your boss sends you an email letting you know that you have to come in to work on Saturday to finish typing up those TPS reports. “Sure thing, boss! Because I wasn’t planning on spending my day off in my sweats, on the couch, watching all the seasons of Friends on Netflix.”

5. A Good Hair Day filter for Instagram. No explanation needed.

6. A MapQuest that doesn’t over-direct. MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

7. A few less questions from MS Word. I’m always slightly terrified when I exit Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my 10-page document that I swear I did not make any changes to.

8. A light in the freezer. There is no excuse for the fact that we still haven’t evolved to put a light in the freezer. Let’s get on that.

9. This closet.

. . . And now the thing technology can relax about: video players. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blu-Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection, yet again.

[Image via here]