I was reading a book the other day that brought up a thought. Is Technology the new from of deus ex machina? John Scalzi satired this this his book "Red Shirts", a satire of Star Trek back in 2012. But I am seeing more and more of that type of solution popping up in books, Or the Hacker that can magically get into any computer to solve the current obstacle for the characters.
True. Your MC might be mountain climbing, and fall, and have his rope snag on a tree, resting on handy ledge. Ledge ex machina. Rock on, dude.
More if it hadn't been foreshadowed. DEM usually skips the building blocks, crashes the party, pisses everyone off. The writer wrote himself into a corner and didn't even edit the story afterwards to set up the conditions. I do agree the tech thing is usually implemented in a lazy fashion. It's just magic, which seems like a missed opportunity. My favourite version of it though is the children in either Jurassic Park 1 or 2 (book, can't remember which) saving the day by simply being able to grasp and quickly lean the concept of a computer user interface. No hacking, just being the only one around who's both alive and capable of computer literacy.
