Technology...

This is a contest submission from a few years back....


If you think all the high-tech gadgetry on the market confuses you today, remember the grand saying, “Misery loves company.” You, and about every other person on the face of this earth can be overwhelmed by the bells and whistles on communication products on the market today. These products range from TV remote controls, cell-phones, Blackberry’s, Wi-Fi Laptops, and of course, MP 3’players. Don’t feel as if you missed out on the information age. Nowadays, it practically takes a degree from MIT to decipher how to utilize these technological monstrosities and gadgets, and get them to function and work so you can utilize them. While they offer some wonderful features, are the benefits they provide you with worth the confusion?

Looking at these bizarre, robotic like objects makes me miss the ‘tin-cans attached to a string’ communication methods from my childhood. Remember hooking one up with your best friend from lazy summer days past? Now that’s wholesome communication at it’s finest. Is all this technology aging us? What happened to rotary dials? Party lines? Remember when the first three digits of a phone number began with the alphabet. My prefix use to be EM7. Where did those days go?

Recently, I hooked up for my mother a telephone-communications device with a remote wristwatch that calls up to six pre-determined numbers if she has an emergency. She’s eighty-two. She’s had a broken leg, heart attacks, strokes, and macular degeneration and is legally blind in one eye. Thank goodness the remote access wristwatch only has two buttons: a red one, and a black one. The red one obviously means EMERGENCY. The black one means:”Oops, I bumped it accidentally” and cancels the aforementioned calling tree. Otherwise, I fear she’d lie there for hours from a fall, spending precious moments trying to negotiate the keypad.

What’s with remotes? Why so many buttons? We don’t need all this fancy technology in our society to exist. Granted, some fields rely on technology. We need the 911 Emergency System. We need the heart-monitoring systems hospitals utilize. NASA can put men on the moon. NASA needs updated, rapid results type technology. But for the rest of us? Do I need all those buttons on my remote? Just give me a channel up and down, a set of numbers, a volume up and down, and a power button. I’m good to go from there. Don’t add more to confuse my mind. I have a Masters degree in education, but I couldn’t program my mothers phone. I begged and bribed my husband to hook the darn thing up.

Do we really need a clock on our coffee pot? If I’m making coffee, I know it’s early in the morning. I don’t need the coffee pot blaring at me and informing me that its 5:45 AM. I can look at my tired eyes and my matted hair and know I’ve just plopped out of bed. My sore achy muscles tell me it’s early. I don’t need another clock on my coffee pot.

Now, my television set can give me e-mail messages. It’s not a computer, but, my cable company now advertises the newest boxing match on pay-per-view via electronic messages on my menu. I don’t need my cable company persuading me to watch boxing. Maybe if I did watch boxing, I’d at least be glad that they haven’t replaced the round bells with the gnarly “beeps” that are so common today.

So, as I’m typing this article on my Apple laptop, I appreciate the ability to correct my mistakes without white out. The delete key does wonders. However, I miss my typewriter. I miss the reversible black/red ribbon that had to be replaced periodically. I miss the hand crank that moved me to the next line. Yes, technology has made some tremendous advances. Some of the amenities are a blessing in life. We couldn’t exist as a society without these fantastic technology advances.

Technology makes me miss the good ole-days. We can still reminisce and remember those lazy days of our youth, when life was at a slow pace. Try these ideas, and see if you recollect the past. The next time you’re at the grocery store, by some flour and eggs and roll some homemade noodles out from scratch instead of buying bagged noodles. Get out the old silver grinder and fix up a plate of ham salad instead of using the fancy schmancy food processor. Write a letter to your niece and have it delivered by the United States Postal Service. Putting a stamp on a letter does wonders for communication in warm and tender ways. Call up a grocery store and order your groceries to be delivered. We can still be in touch with our past. We just need to be proactive and chose which parts we want to remember and be reminded of.