At the risk of sounding like a doddering, senile, old guy afraid of anything new, and life in the 21st Century generally, which I am, but I don’t want to sound like one, there are many things I would prefer that, when they reach a good point in their development, would stay there.
“What?” you ask. Computers and software, for instance. I began using a desktop Apple II way back in the Stone Age of the early ’80s. For you younger readers, that’s 1980s not 1880s. Now, I’m one who was dismembering my laptops and desktops, swapping drives, upgrading other components, cleaning out fossilized animals and vegetation. But now their new laptops are unibodies and airs. Apple put them together so you can’t even replace the battery yourself.
And the software. There used to be one type of software for word processing, another for illustration, another for photo work, another for page layouts, another for bookkeeping, and another for hacking highly-classified defense programs at the Pentagon. That wasn’t good enough for developers, who began adding features of other software to their own products. It resulted in a word-processing program that could do page layouts, but not as well as the page layout program; a page layout program that could now do word processing, but not as well as a word processing program; a Pentagon hacking program that could now keep a daily appointment calendar, but not as well as a daily appointment calendar program, and so on. So I’m stuck with a bunch of big, bloated software products with a lot of functions I never use because they don’t work as well as the products created for that function and require ever more powerful computers to run them.
And what’s worse, everything is stuck up in the stinking clouds. Not a problem for Pentagon defense system hacking programs because that’s where you want to be anyway, but God help us if there’s ever a major power grid failure. There goes access to files, software, and your 637 Facebook friends.
For many years, besides working as an independently-wealthy newspaper columnist, I did book design. If I asked you to compare a book I produced on my computer in 1998 to a book I produced on a new computer in 2018, you couldn’t tell the difference. So why do I need to spend thousands of dollars on new stuff? I can still produce projects on my old laptop with old, unbloated software because the only reason I’d need a new high-speed computer with the computing power of the Mars Rover would be to handle the big, fat, bloated software.
How about automobiles? Pretty soon I won’t even have to get a driver’s license because my car will drive itself and park in tight spots without any help from me. When I last rented a car, by the time I figured out what all the controls were for, I’d accidentally removed my gallbladder. I don’t want a self-driving car. I was even happy using a stick shift and a clutch. And what happened to vent windows? They were those little things between the front windows and the windshield that you could open to get a nice cross breeze at high speeds without the wind ripping off your face or other essential body parts.
My first wireless phone was a clunky affair that weighed about 27 pounds and had an antenna to pull up when I wanted to make a call. Phones got smaller and better, until they became tiny flip phones that could fit in the palm of my hand or some rarely used orifice. I thought they were great. I felt like Captain Kirk on Star Trek. Then came the smart phones. They keep getting bigger and adding more features and apps, and are now approaching the size of tablets. Very soon they’ll probably be the size of a flat screen television.
My wife told me it was time to deep six my flip phone and get into the 21st Century, so I reluctantly bought a smart phone. When it beeped recently, I maneuvered through screens, weather reports, and male enhancement ads, until I thought I’d found the button to answer the call. Somehow, and this is true, I’d called my eye doctor’s office. I never did find out who tried to call me.
I like my tiny flip phone. I can take basic pictures and send and receive texts. With the touch of a button, I can actually call and receive calls, which is the reason why I wanted a phone in the first place.
Now that I’ve ranted for this week, I’m going to crawl back into my cave, gnaw on some mastodon bones, and wait for my flip phone to ring.