“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology.”
— John Tudor
Saw an ad on TV last week about a vehicle offering a panoramic one-piece electronic display for the entire dash. Everything to control the car in one big wide electronic screen.
Maybe I’m becoming my father, but my first impression was, “Why?” He never owned a car with power seats or power windows. Always said those were unnecessary luxuries that cost too much money to fix when they needed repairing.
I used to laugh at him. I’m laughing now, however, at knowing what my kids will say about me when I’m gone. It’s a generational thing. What goes around comes around. Their kids will one day laugh at them, too.
Call me old-fashioned. But for someone who marveled at the invention of the fax machine, heralding it as “futuristic,” reality has proven little more to me than how high tech equates to high frustration.
My VCR still flashes “12:00 AM,” reminding me I don’t have a youngster at home to set it for me. And yes—I still have a VCR.
When Lee was still at home, were cruising through town in the used red Chevy pickup that was to be his first vehicle when he got his license. On that day in the mid-1990s, the high-tech, multibutton, seek and scan, digital time, AM-FM, cassette, autorewind, nuclear powered, doubleknit radio was tuned to an oldies station. The same station it stayed on because once I got it dialed in, I wasn’t about to change It.
“Dad, can we listen to something else,” asked Lee.
“Well,” I hesitated. “I kind of like that Chuck Berry tune that’s playing right now.”
“You can’t work the radio, can you,” he said.
“Sure,” I retorted. “I just want to listen to oldies right now.”
Reaching for the radio, Lee said, “This Is how you change stations.” He pushed a button, and the volume jumped to a nine on the Richter scale. Widows vibrated. Leaves fell off trees as we drove by. Windshields cracked in cars. Dogs howled.
“Turn that thing down,” I shouted. I knew Lee couldn’t hear me. I just hoped he could read my lips.
Instead, he hit another button, and the whole face fell off the radio. It landed on the floor. He looked at me, the piece on the floor, and said, “That’s the wrong button, too, huh.”
We replaced the radio’s front panel with all the buttons, but the volume remained unchanged. Even worse, the errant device had crash landed on a rap station.
“How do you turn this thing off?” Lee shouted. I couldn’t hear him, but I could read his lips. It’s a skill parents learn from teenagers.
Truthfully, I never figured out which button turned it off. I had an instruction book but lacked the eyes of a hawk required to see the tiny symbols resembling, more than anything else, ancient hieroglyphics.
That was almost 30 years ago, but some things never change. I went shopping with a friend needing a new clothes washer a while back. I was still trying to understand why clothes washers need wi-fi when I saw a “smart” dishwasher. It supposedly sensed the amount of food on dirty dishes, calculated the detergent needed to clean them, tracked the amount of lapsed time between loads, and noted the number of times the door was opened.
A dishwasher with more ambition in the kitchen than the average teenager cannot be a good thing.
Humorous columnist and author Lewis Grizzard once wrote about what life was like for someone raised in the 50s and trying to cope in the 80s. I’m thinking nowadays that we need eyesight from our 20s and more education than we could acquire by our 30s to navigate simple devices that once responded beautifully to a simple on/ off switch.
Count me out of the unending rush to more technology and the resulting frustration levels. The most complex technology I want to know about is one button on my phone that relieves frustration.
It’s the one I push to call my son and ask how to reset the time on my VCR.
BY LEON ALDRIDGE
