Today many Americans will awake to find something terrifying under the Christmas tree. We can’t tell you exactly what that frightening object will be, but we can supply the general category: technology. There will be a new gadget–a PDA, a DVD burner, something bristling with buttons–and it will be gaily wrapped. But once the wrapping comes off, the suffering starts.
Ever heard that technology will simplify your life?
Ha! Tell that to the woman we know who–this is no joke–cannot find the right button to turn on her television. She’s not stupid. She simply is confused by at least four different but similar-looking remote control devices that operate the TV, the digital cable box, the VCR and the DVD player. (Note: It takes the correct combination of two of the four to actually turn on the television.)
Don’t even ask about changing the channel.
Consider the plight of poor L.Z., who wrote a plaintive letter to Tribune car columnist Jim Mateja recently. Seems this self-described “old lady” confessed that she was unable to program the door locks on her 2003 Toyota Camry, despite reading and re-reading the owner’s manual.
We weep for her, really we do. We understand completely, particularly after a nasty run-in we had recently trying to program a garage door opener. Who hasn’t had a similar experience with a gadget? You get it home. You unwrap it. You insert the batteries. And then you spend three sweaty hours trying to get the blasted thing to work. Yes, you even stoop to reading the instructions. No help there. They seem to have been translated into some archaic form of English by a committee of lawyers. It’s like clicking the “help” icon on the computer. Help? Are you kidding? Most of the time, you can’t even describe the problem well enough to find the right category.
Technology, have pity on us!
Social scientists have often wondered why, with all the material comforts that Americans have gained in the past century, they don’t seem to be much happier, as a whole, than they were in less “advanced” times. The reason, we suspect, is simple: Gadgets are driving us crazy.
We’re not Luddites. We love this stuff, really. But sometimes it doesn’t love us.
“Resistentialism” is the term that comes to mind. It’s a whimsical coinage that maintains “inanimate objects are hostile to humans,” according to one definition. That is: The things are against us.
From our point of view, particularly with some of the latest technology, it’s not so far-fetched.
The so-called smart house, for instance, is all the rage now in some affluent circles. It bristles with sensors and advanced technology to control lights, heat, air-conditioning, security system, sprinklers. But a recent New York Times article warned of the pitfalls of a house that is chock full of technology and may believe itself to be more clever than its occupant. Sensors are great, for instance, until they stop sensing. A glitch in the system can mean the burglar alarm blares at irregular intervals throughout the night, even after you’ve ripped the panel from the wall.
That’s scary, but what will really catapult you into the asylum for the technologically insane is buying a new television. The choices–CRT, LCD, DLP, LCoS, Plasma–in various incarnations, with or without HD (high definition), or ED (enhanced definition), in a regular aspect ratio or 16:9 (widescreen), with 480i lines of resolution, or 480p or 720p or 1080i or 1080p–are so confusing and daunting that the average male–who prides himself on understanding these things–is paralyzed under an avalanche of choices.
The suspicion here is that most wives don’t find that outcome entirely unsatisfactory.
To make matters worse, manufacturers are now, diabolically, cramming several gadgets into one, thereby increasing exponentially the confusion and creating the near certainty that you will never master all the features of the device. (Nor, we’d add, would you want to.)
Take your average cellphone, which now takes pictures, surfs the Web and draws your bath. (Just kidding about the last one.) Even a simpler cellphone of our acquaintance has an instruction booklet that runs to 188 pages. OK, they’re small pages, but who’s got time to read that?
Never mind. Someday, we’re told, it will all merge into one glorious machine that even the most technologically challenged will easily be able to operate.
With 188 pages of instructions, that is.
