TECHNOLOGY
Gadgets (Can't Get Enough of 'Em)
By Elizabeth Station
“Lo!” said Henry David Thoreau, "Men have become the tools
of their tools."
And thinking about technology, I realize this is true of women, too.
It dawned on me when I was house sitting for my brother last week. He lives in a lovely old building in Hyde Park with high ceilings and creaky wood floors, mosaic tile in the foyer and rich, heavy glass doors. But he’s also got a few new gizmos in the apartment that I couldn’t figure out how the hell to work.
Take the bathroom scale—I mean, the Healthometer.
When I hopped on to get my weight it gave me the time instead, and then a big flashing “E.”
I pressed the two buttons on top (“set/save” and “scroll/history”). No go. I tried one of the four buttons numbered 1 through 4 on the side. Nada. When I had time later in the day, I got down on my hands and knees and squinted at the fine print: “Always tap the zero to activate your scale.”
I tapped the zero, got on, and got my weight. Eureka.
Emboldened, I thought I’d watch a World Cup match on one of his myriad sports stations—a luxury since there’s no cable at my house. I turned on the TV and found only fuzz. Then I spied three metal boxes under the set: a VCR, a DVD player and—aha!—a thin, gray box for the DirectTV. I switched it on but could bring only one channel to life.
Persisting, I found one remote on top of the TV and two more on the dining room table, plus detailed operating instructions that my brother had written out on a legal pad, and a printed guide to the most popular of the 700 channels available. Putting all this together, I found four different ESPNs but none was broadcasting soccer.
Exhausted, I gave up.I did manage to check my email
on his vintage 2003 PC and printed something on the all-in-one scan/fax/copy/printer
without incident. Yet in just an hour, I realized how far we’ve come.
My brother is no techie; neither am I. But these gadgets and their operating
systems have crept into our lives—sometimes invited, sometimes not—and
we creep, or crawl after them, as best we can.
All Teched-Up and Nowhere to Go
A generation ago, the essentials in a woman’s purse were a red lipstick, some “mad money,” and maybe a pack of smokes. But my mom couldn’t have imagined the four nifty devices I seldom leave home without these days. One’s a digital voice recorder—handy for taping interviews, conversations, or a live concert and downloading them later to my laptop. One’s a digital camera. One’s an iPod loaded with music, photos, and video like a couple episodes of Lost. The last is a cell phone. Remarkably, they and their data all fit with room to spare in my wee handbag.
In four short years, I’ve moved quickly along a continuum from not being able to imagine such things existed, to saying I didn’t want them, to accepting that they could be nice but I really didn’t need them, to acquiring them. And now, I’ve come to depend on them all the while wishing they were smaller or—better yet—housed in a single device.
Sure, I can take pictures with the phone and the iPod holds photos I shot with the camera, but keeping these functions separate seems so… cumbersome. I am waiting for the single, merged camera-MP3-recording phone that I’m sure will hit the market any day now, and the inevitable fall in price that will mean I and millions around the world can own it.
The question is, how might we have to bend and scrape to use it?
Take My Car, Please
Most Americans are still driving around fossil
fuel guzzlers, but this year my husband bought a sparkly new Toyota Prius
hybrid. He traded in his ’91
Honda Accord (which lacked airbags, power windows, a keyless remote, or a
CD player) and feeling flush with that extra $850 in his pocket, splurged
on some extras for the Prius.
Come to think of it, though, maybe what he got is standard. He can tap a screen to control the climate or check fuel efficiency (about 50 miles to the gallon). He can plug his iPod into a hidden compartment on the driver’s armrest to personalize the audio system.
The key to the Prius is not a key but a little rectangular doo-dad with a few buttons that you never actually have to press. You don't open the door or start the engine with this device; you just keep it on your person and the car senses it's there and lets you proceed with your business. To turn the car on and off, you press a round “power” button on the dashboard. And when you're stopped in traffic, the Prius goes into a kind of sleep mode, waiting silently until you hit the gas pedal and it deems it necessary to consume fuel.
“It's like driving a Mac,” my husband rhapsodizes to anyone who will listen.
Because hybrids are so utterly quiet, I got into a bit of a bind when I borrowed it to run errands the other day. I parked along Clark Street, hopped out, and attempted to lock the door—not with a key, mind you, but by tapping the discreet black button where a keyhole would be. But the car would not accept my knowing tap. Try as I might, it beeped in disagreement and refused to lock itself. (In fact, the Prius is programmed to stay open if you leave the little device anywhere inside it, so that you’ll never be locked out of your car.)
I was holding the device in my hand, so I couldn't figure out why the car wouldn't lock. Had too many hybrid drivers crashed the system? Was there a button I could hit to reboot? I was about to get down on my knees and look under the car for clues. Then I realized that the car was still running.
Mystery solved, I powered the Prius down, successfully locked it, and went on my merry way. Had I failed to notice or solve the problem, anyone could have driven off with that automobile. But only a technology-savvy thief would have even realized it was there for the taking, or been able to turn it off when his joyride was through.
Generation Next
Perhaps I can pride myself on being a little more wired (or wireless) than the next gal, but the next generation is miles ahead. My teenage son saved up to buy a sweet little item called a Play Station Portable (or PSP), which lets him waste many hours playing wickedly fun video games on a tiny, handheld color screen. It is also serves as an MP3 player and, to my amazement—though not his—gets wireless internet. ”How does it do all that?” I marveled. “Magic!” he smiled, poking fun at my incredulity.
For privileged kids, working technology doesn't inspire awe but an ordinary sense that all is right in the universe—kind of like breathing. My son's idea of relaxation is to play MLB 2006 on his PSP while instant messaging with friends, checking baseball scores on the laptop, glancing at a Simpsons rerun on TV, and strumming his (electric) guitar. When I ask what he’s doing, he answers with a grunt, but teenage boys have answered questions with a grunt for millennia. That has nothing to do with technology.
My 11-year-old daughter, bless her heart, would rather read or look for birds' nests in the woods than get on the computer. But even she belongs to an online chat group of grade school aficionados of the Redwall books and delivered her first PowerPoint presentation (it was about potatoes) way back in fourth grade.
To try to give these young'uns a little sense of the wonder we feel about technology, my husband and I like to regale them with stories from the past. We recall lazy Midwestern summers in the era before video rentals. We remember looking forward to nightfall, when WGN came in better over the transistor radio. We recount when we were exchange students overseas, and communicated with friends and family via letters that could take a month to send and receive.
Every now and then, we take the kids camping and cook marshmallows around a fire, basking only in the light of nearby RVs with electricity. I think they appreciate the effort, although I'm sure my son text-messages from his tent late at night.
I love the gadgets and gizmos and how they’re improving all the time, but I'm not sure if these devices are saving us time or simplifying our existence. By the time my daughter learns to drive, I’m betting all cars will have wireless internet and remote, voice-activated velocity control for nervous parents who want to monitor things from home via GPS (“Brake, honey, brake!”).
If I get myself a better-paying job, I'll happily go out and buy my own hybrid for the fuel efficiency. But what I really want are new acquisitions that make my life easier, not more cluttered. I'd like a car that could cook dinner, for starters. And maybe mow the lawn and take out the trash while I’m at work.
I told my husband I want one gadget to do it all for me. “But would you really?” he asked. “Think about it. Would you want to collapse all your friends into one person? Or trade your two quirky offspring for a single ‘upgraded’ model?”
He believes that technology is fun, that the gadgets are like toys or helpers—and that those of us who embrace them do so on an emotional as much as practical level. For him, it’s a cozy feeling to tuck the kids in and go to bed as the washing machine and dishwasher hum, toiling away in the dark while the family sleeps. And he’s sincerely fond of his indoor/outdoor digital thermometers—all three of ‘em.
I have to admit he’s right; personal technologies are as much about pleasure as convenience. I like to imagine that my little pals are standing by silently in my purse to assist and entertain me, and that the car—like a lover—responds to my touch.
The gleaming silver of a brand-new gadget and the pleasant heft of an ingeniously small device seduce their owners as much as they serve them. I will buy, and love, the hybrid’s successor someday.
Especially if I can get it to do the laundry.
