Deus Ex Machina

Technology both frees us and binds us tightly - choose carefully

My understanding of our current level of technological achievement is, on a scale of 1 - 10, right there just above the line that says “assistance and constant supervision required.” I am no digital native. What’s a digital native you ask? Those who have been born into current technology and are not only proficient in its use but adapt quickly to new tasks, abilities and concepts that only serve to bewilder me further. Our kids and grandkids are not intimidated by technology nor by the expansion of technological toys, gadgets and capabilities. Once I get comfortable and low-level proficient on any one thing, Lord help me if a new version or an add-on comes out or an update occurs that fractures my fragile understanding of which button to push when. We keep an old Amazon box of devices that are beyond our abilities to operate, repair or turn on, and, with every visit, each grandchild is assigned a different task to either explain to us how to connect, turn on, operate or otherwise utilize a different device. They pick one out of the box, look at it for a few moments, turn it on, quickly push several buttons and make magical adjustments and hand it back to us all lit up and operational and say “here you go. Next time remember this is the on button and just go from there” in a slightly snide, self assured manner. As if we understood what “go from there” actually meant.

What all this comes down to is they are not afraid of pushing buttons. People my age, as a rule, seem to believe that if you push too many buttons or punch them in the wrong sequence, something will blow up and it will be all your fault. I think all that fear comes from being in elementary school during the cold war of the 60’s when they told us that going into the hall and sitting in neat rows with a book over your head would protect you from the radioactive effects and violence of a nuclear blast or a tornado, whichever came first. None of us really believed it but we were too young to do anything except blindly follow directions, so that even if it was the wrong thing to do and we all died in a nuclear holocaust at least we would have died in a neat row and following directions.

I used to be rather proud of my abilities to read and follow printed directions that came with almost everything we bought. I could hook up a stereo, connect speakers, operate remote controls, change batteries and utilize, if not daily then often, practically any appliance we bought or replaced. Now I find myself in a maze of electronic and technical wizardry in 8 different languages that is, as my grandma would say, “beyond my understanding.” She never learned to use a cell phone and wouldn’t even try, and this was back in the days of flip phones. She told us “I reached the limits of my understanding of technology when televisions - another marvel - acquired remote controls where you didn’t have to get up to change the channels or the volume. It took me a month before I could watch my shows again, and I decided I didn’t want any more convenience in my life.” That’s about the way I feel now. Every time I check out of Publix and tap my card, I remind myself that 250 years ago this whole process would have been deemed witchcraft and I would have been labeled as a warlock and either burned at the stake or subjected to the dunking stool. You don’t remember the dunking stool? During the witch trials in New England someone decided that if you strapped suspected witches to a chair attached by a long pole and lowered them into the water for a few minutes and they floated or otherwise didn’t die by drowning that meant the dunkee was a witch and must be burned at the stake. If they did die their name was cleared and they could, after all, be buried with the regular folks.

Just a few short years ago - around the time I retired the first time - I saw a kid in a grocery store pay for his mother’s groceries with a credit card by tapping it on the little digital machine instead of inserting it. I backed up a step or two and when the cashier began ringing up my order asked, “how did he do that?” “Do what?” asked the cashier. (You remember when Wal-Mart had cashiers and not self-checkout? Me either.) “He didn’t put his card in the machine. He just tapped it on the top and a receipt came out and he walked away. How did that happen?” The cashier looked quickly at my bank card and said “His bank gave him a card with a little symbol on it that allows him to pay without inserting the card. It doesn’t look like your bank has caught up with the 21st century yet.” My bank eventually caught up with the 21st century, and now I can pay for a round of golf by tapping my card just like the rest of the robots. I still don’t understand how that works or why it works or if it’s legal or an approved religious withdrawal or if maybe the number of the beast has been written on my forehead in my sleep by demons or Hogwarts has taken over the universe.

Let’s not even start about the password dilemma. There are few things I despise more than when my computer refuses to remember a password in the same way that I can’t remember a password I made 2 minutes ago so I end up changing it and a rather vicious cycle begins. After about 15 minutes of the most intense frustration I have felt since my first few days of 7th grade marching band (that’s another story I will tell you one day when I’m older), and as my temper threatens to gain control of my words, thoughts and actions I close the computer, leave my chair and either go for a walk or mow the yard or both. Don’t judge. You have your coping mechanisms and I have mine. I have, in fact, placed orders for a variety of things with companies whose passwords my computer remembered rather than initiate a transaction with a company whose password my computer, for some unknown reason, also forgot. Sometimes Betsy asks me for a password to the insurance app or the PayPal app and I can either leave the house quickly and pretend I didn’t hear her or spend 45 minutes of rising red hatred of all things techie trying to find out why a pass key lets you avoid the password you created in the first place and refuses to show it to you again. Just writing this paragraph has raised my blood pressure significantly so I’ll be back later after I’ve calmed down and become semi-rational again.

I saw an app yesterday for Bible verses and thought that might be a good thing to have on my phone. I got about ¾ of the way through the sign up process after downloading the app and discovered their “get one week free and then only $6.99 per month for the rest of your life” note hidden at the end of the sign up and decided quickly to delete the app (after a grandson showed me how) and just read an actual Bible for free. :”Get thee behind me Satan” went through my mind as I deleted that duplicitous evil app that preys upon good intentions.

You probably already know this, but technology is not only ubiquitous, it is highly intrusive. What does that mean to me? It means that I carry my phone and all its power with me practically everywhere I go. I have noted also that anyone over the age of 17 will only part with their cell phone unwillingly if at all. In my defense, I do leave it in the car when I get out to shop, make my weekly pilgrimage to Lowe’s or Home Depot or to church. My kids and grandkids don’t understand this particular sacrifice, and often wonder out loud what would happen if they needed me and my phone was in the car. “I’ll call you when I return to the car” was not the reply they were looking for, but I did remind them that Nana or 911 was always available during the short time I wasn’t, but they just shake their heads and walk away unsatisfied by my archaic solution and my abject refusal to be chained to any appliance without respite. I am afraid we have, like Pavlov’s dogs, been trained to respond immediately to the “ding” of a new message or email or advertisement from all those companies we have given our emails to in response to the insidious “get 25% off on your next purchase” requests that allow them to send us hourly reminders to buy something we really don’t need because we don’t understand how much whatever their product is will change our lives for the better…or something like that, anyway. The result is the same - we are trained to look at our phones every 15 or so seconds to respond to whatever it decides to show us, however trivial. Then there are the free moments we get to sit beside the pool or on the driveway in the middle of nature’s wonder and beauty, and rather than listen to the birds and watch the squirrels and deer we get that inevitable “ding” again and again and we simply have to look, and once we look once we don’t look up again and are surprised that and hour has passed and we don’t know where it went…or how to get it back. I might suggest that one day a week be named “national leave your phone off day,” but I’m pretty sure every company with an internet presence would retaliate by sending even more messages and emails than we already get, and every person below the age of 30 would break out in a sweat after 15 minutes of no phone access because of the withdrawal symptoms and congress would pass a law that forbids phones be off for more than a few hours because we would miss something important they wanted us to hear, no matter how trivial. I am of the opinion that all that technology, individually and collectively, creates stress levels our bodies are incapable of overcoming and lead inevitably to serious diseases or., at the very least, debilitating, crippling anxiety. In spite of the symptoms we ignore and push to the side, all of us believe the biggest lie of any addictive element; “I can quit whenever I want to.” Sure you can. Lay that phone down and forget where it is and watch the anxiety grow to unbearable levels until you find it and can breathe again and tell me that’s not an addiction.

So we have willingly allowed ourselves to become enslaved by technology, and most people don’t even realize the depth of their own personal affliction. We are manipulated by tech, and every decision we make and every intention, however good, is overcome by the impetus to somehow complete our incomplete existence by purchasing something - anything - that is suggested on our vicious little hand held dictators whether we actually need it or not.

Remember Arthur C Clarke? The British author who wrote “2001 - A Space Odyssey?” As one intimately familiar with the vagaries and influences and dangers of technology, Arthur made several observations that become more relevant with each passing day, even if we are far too busy in our addictions to remember what he said:

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible he is very probably wrong.”

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

And finally, the really scary one: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

I rest my case. We are most definitely living in a time of magic and possibilities so intertwined that, if they do not kill us as a species first, we might continue to discover and/or become enslaved to deeper and deeper mysteries and influences and discoveries. Sooner or later our technological creations will discover we are the afflicted and not really the ones in charge…or maybe they already know.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.