Internet-based services and software can be astoundingly useful, transformative and impactful. They can also reduce one to a gibbering, frustration-maddened ball of rage.

I sometimes wonder whether the well-documented rise of hate speech and trolling on the internet is directly attributable to the residual pent-up irritation of trying to do something that should be straightforward and finding that the promise of "the connected world" can be a somewhat poisoned chalice.

One of the tenets of "the market" seems to be that your most finite resource becomes your most valuable. Increasingly, that appears to be human attention, time and patience.

With an ever-increasing — and laudable — emphasis on security updates, coupled with the "move fast and break things" approach of releases and updates, I have come to dread launching an app that I may not have used for a week or two.

We have the most powerful computing devices in history available to us and yet it is entirely possible for me to launch an app on an otherwise stunningly fast computer and have to wait for an indeterminate length of time while an update downloads, then installs and relaunches.

Yes, I get the security updates and the bug fixes and sometimes even added functionality. I also get noticeably older. I find myself fondly remembering the performance of my Pentium computer running Windows 98 and the speed with which the apps would spring to life.

Background updates. It's a thing. Developers, get involved. Just saying.

Then there are the issues that arise when failure scenarios — and the paths to resolution — have not been fully thought through. An example comes to mind from recent, bitter experience.

In order to secure some of my more important log-ins, it's Security 101 really, I enabled two-factor authentication which requires something you know (a password) plus something you have (a token). Many apps and services support a variety of the more well-known third party token providers. Others have taken a more go-it-alone approach.

Many vendors have thought through the key issues of what happens when you lose your token. Others, maybe not so much.

I lost/damaged/submerged the phone that had the token app for a specific service. So, I went to the log-in page, entered the password, and was then prompted for the number from the token, which I couldn't provide.

Eventually a message appeared, saying: "You have exceeded the number of verification attempts we allow. To access your account, follow the instructions for lost, damaged or forgotten security tokens."

Excellent. I follow the link, which brings me to a page that says: "You have encountered an internal error. Please try again later. We apologise for any inconvenience we may have caused. Please contact Customer Support for assistance."

So, I click on Customer Support link which brings me to this: "The page you are looking for has been moved. If this page does not redirect you in 10 secs, please click here."

After repeated attempts I have to say, with considerable admiration, that I have never had to wait more than three seconds before being redirected … back to the original log-in page.

This was the point that I started gnawing my own first-world knuckle. I'd still be chewing on it now if I hadn't eventually tracked down the fix. I found the hidden phone number and talked to a human. Fixed. Not reducing all human interaction in a process to zero? It's a thing. Get involved. Just saying.