Apologies to Mother Goose, but I think the ol’ gal would understand…
Hickory-dickory doc,
once my watch was just a clock,
now it beeps and pings,
tracks steps and Bings,
And will keep going long after I stop.
Hello. My name is Kim. I was once a techno-holic.
My confession may be similar to yours if you grew up in the baby boomer decades that exploded with brand new technology. One moment we were rocking in our cribs without a worry in the world, and the next thing we knew we were rocketing across the cyber-scape, our heads crammed with passwords. As the history of mankind goes, it was only a finger snap between our Lincoln Logs and our linked in log ins.
At first, the techno-wonders were distant and gigantic, like room-sized computers and towering spacecrafts, shooting straight out of the science fiction stories by Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Technology was something we watched as spectators—moon walks, super-sonic airplanes and Technicolor movies at the drive-in theatres.
Hands-On Technology
Then, wonder of wonders, technology got smaller, easier to operate. Our parents brought it into our homes: television—first black and white, then in color, wired telephones in our kitchens, with extensions eventually to the living room or to the barn, and battery-operated transistor radios that could follow us around the farm yet hide easily under our pillows at night.
All these amazing inventions didn’t go unheeded by alarmists and doomsters. As the fateful year approached, people shuddered to think that our society could become like George Orwell’s novel 1984. Though published in 1949, the novel’s themes of social control and surveillance kept more than a few of us college students sleepless, wondering if government satellites could spy on our popcorn parties or detect if we cheated.
Diddle-diddle dumpling, Alexa’s on,
monitors my actions from dawn to dawn,
Hears everything, and what it can’t see
Is covertly recorded by my smart tv.
Then, without warning somewhere around the mid-1980s, the floodgates burst, and new technology appeared everywhere. And it got downright personal.
I loved it.
Like so many others, I raced to buy the newest, fastest, biggest personal computer, with the magnificent green pixelated screen and more hums, bells and beeps than you could imagine in your wildest techno-dream. In the early 1990s, when I worked in a corporate headquarters in the Twin Cities, I was the first in the PR department to buy a “portable” computer—it weighed 26 pounds and was the size of the maximum carry-on luggage. Wow. Never had straining your back while walking through the airport looked so cool.
My portable computer’s word-processing abilities smoked any electric typewriter and launched my writing into the 21st century. All it required was to buy floppy disks, “format” them, “save” them, write something and “save copy to disk”, then “format disk to print”, and there you go, the copy printed on the continuous roll of paper inside the attached printer—a printer that cost as much as the computer.
It was awesome.
Mary had a little RAM,
that’s why her computer’s slow
She bought a 1K gig and flipped her wig
It’ll store more than she’ll ever know.
Techno-reality Check
One day, shortly after I moved back to central Minnesota, I stopped in a computer store (*yes, a store that only sold and repaired computers*). The store manager found me hungrily eyeing the lineup of most powerful and expensive computers. He asked if he could help. With a wild gleam in my eyes I waved at the top-of-the-line computer on that display counter and said I’d take it.
Unimpressed, he asked me, “What are you planning to use it for?”
“FOR EVERYTHING!!!!!” I explained to him that I was going to explore the expanding world wide web, prepare overhead presentations for EMT classes, make my own greeting cards, play Donkey Kong and SimFarm—and, oh yeah—write the great American novel. Nodding, he led me back a few models (and several hundred dollars) to a mid-size Gateway computer. I began to protest.
His advice stays with me to this day: “About every six months someone is going to launch bigger and faster technology. What you have to learn to do is figure out what you need and buy that. That will be enough.”
Reluctantly, I agreed and bought the smaller computer…and happily used it for the next 12 years. In fact, it outlasted his store.
Twinkle, twinkle my new car
Doesn’t need to go too far
Decked out with electronic amenities,
We live in the garage in comfort and ease.
Techno-prudent
Since then, I’ve tried to follow that advice. I’ll confess that sometimes the bells and whistles dangling on any given gadget can make it hard to do.
I don’t recall when I bought my TV, although by carbon-dating the dust behind it we can place it at about a decade old. Nonetheless, it gets Netflix and the local channels, if I hook up the rabbit ears in the window. It is good enough.
My smartphone is a two-year old hand-me-down from a relative who was embarrassed every time I pulled my five-year old dumbphone out of my pocket. Not that I cared…until the night it gave up its cellular ghost while I was working at the hospital, and the on-call doctor couldn’t hear my patient update.
My last computer that I bought is a “refurbished” model. It’s big enough and fast enough and works fine with the monitor from my old computer—and it saved me hundreds of dollars. That’s a win-win.
From Lunar Walks to Lunatics
Yet despite not having all the latest gadgets, I can keep up with all the important news that technology zings us. For example, I know that the presidential election campaign is still going on…since 2004…only the names have changed. And I’m vaguely aware that some chic, who used to be an Olympic gold-medalist, has daughters who don’t do anything except record their super-rich lives for TV consumption by people who have more time than I do.
A tisket a tasket,
Without my smartphone I’d blow a gasket
To the world it is a door
That leads to friends and games and more
Life without it upsets the basket
Just can’t risk it, nope, just ask it!
Nowadays, when it comes to the techno-lifestyle, I’m so far behind that I can’t even keep up with the obsolete. That’s just fine.
TO-DO LIST TO BE TECHNO-WISE
- Don’t run the race of “newest/biggest/best” technology. You can’t win it for very long.
- As you consider a newer techno-toy, ask yourself if you’re buying it to please what’s inside you or what’s outside you. If the get-the-gadget game is only for others’ approval, leave it and adopt a pet.
- If you think you won’t use it, don’t get it. Hmmm…that’s way too simple.
- Don’t be dazzled by techno-glitz. Focus on what suits your needs best. Contentment is using what you have in the way you want to use it.
- Don’t make excuses when someone pulls out a gadget superior to yours. Remind yourself that it came with a superior price tag, then smile and pat yourself on the back for being techno-sensible.
You truly have a gift for writing.