Technology and the Internet are forever intertwined

The more gadgets can do, the more complicated they get. It's the nature of the beast. We now have iPods that can surf the internet, control your TV, get you stock quotes, make telephone calls, show you movies, play games, stream live video, and, oh, play music. Being able to do all that is great, but it also requires interfacing with a lot of other things, not all of which are Apple products. So it uses standards and custom software and voodoo. And that's where the problems usually begin.

I used to pull my hair out for hours when something like that didn't work like I wanted to. These days, however, you can usually find the source of your problem through good internet searches. Sometimes it takes more than just Google to help as oftentimes you find that forums don't allow themselves to be Google archived. But forums themselves have search functions, so often you just need to find the defacto forum for whatever device you are having trouble with and search there. Usually someone else has had the problem already and has figured out how to fix it. I usually just Google for "gadgetname forum" when Google isn't giving me the info I want and go check the forum directly.

And even if you can't fix it that way, often you can post your problem to that forum and someone will help you. For free. This is the greatest thing about the Internet, and is a main reason, IMHO, that gadgets are getting so popular that do so many things. People feel comfortable they can work through issues. Companies don't have to deal with nearly as many support inquiries on their products. It's a great symbiotic relationship when you consider how many of these devices actually USE the internet in some way, too.

As web forum software gets better, this will only become that much easier. Once we get single login setups like openid.net for most forums, it will be even nicer. Life might be complicated in some ways by all these gadgets, but they do make it better in some ways, and the complications are getting smaller and smaller. Or larger and larger with easier and easier fixes. I'm not sure which.