Archived Editorial for 12/31/00

Given the State of Technology, Part 2

In the mornings I write, really write - sitting at my desk, picking up pen & facing white pages, feeling the ebb & flow of the ink & the words; re-acquainting myself with a meditation I've used all my life & which I now often forget with an eager ergonomic keyboard beckoning to my fingertips.

By the second day the 'phones are dead & such a quietness settles all about us. We sleep long, we sleep late & we watch the wind whip the conifers about & listen to the alders clack their teeth & we wait.

The next morning, as I am preparing coffee the old fashioned way, my ears are filled with the chirping, whirring & murmurings of motors on the move. The refrigerator starts its mutter, the battery it beeps, the television its hisses, the fans stir & the lights blink on again.

Given the state of technology, when things bought half a decade ago die without warning they needs must be replaced rather than repaired. The cost of a new appliance is far less now than finding someone to repair it - the cost of parts, labor & fuel for the traveling. This is a disposable age when our mothers' televisions & our grandparents' telephones are not heirlooms to pass down; when the tools of our fathers are no longer compatible with our children's technology.

Given that the state of technology changes more rapidly than our biological & behavioral states, in our seventh year of marriage, we are met with the demise of many of our technical tools. The base station of our cordless telephone howls; our coffee maker burbles its final brew; our iron falls apart; our vacuum cleaner, state-of-the-art those many years ago when it lustily roared & sucked, now wheezes & sips in agéd gentility & our hairdryer has screeched to a smoking halt.

Given the state of technology which seeks newer & cheaper ways to better the wheel, we must wade through manuals, as thick as constitutions, to make our appliances work; we must know how to program a computer before getting our printer to produce or before we can watch a satellite fed program. We must make sure that a newfangled hairdryer can take the sudden, inexplicable loss of power without immolating itself in grief.

Given the state of technology & my ascending count of years - I'm soon going to be beyond redemption; the swift current of invention will toss me aside & the learning curve will be steeper than I can stumble. Peter O'Toole gleefully opines that growing old is: “A gas!” Most of the time I feel that way too, until the plumbing falters or the memory blanks & some Shakespearean or Biblical aphorism on aging echoes down the corridors of my mind.

The state of technology gives us the ability to create a space station; to scan one face in a million & come up with a match quicker than it takes me to compose an editorial. Technology lets me write, edit, proofread, spellcheck in minutes; it helps me balance my bank account & talk to someone on the other side of the planet. It helps me make my own greeting cards & bake a potato in a shorter time than it takes to brew a pot of tea & I don't have to touch one piece of paper, not fill one fountain pen, sharpen one pencil, until I pick up the page my printer gurgitates.

Ah, technology! What a world within a world! What a marvel of human engineering! Smaller than the pupil of an eye, stronger than a year's worth of titanium batteries & swifter than a speeding mind - technology will get us to the moon, brew beverages & mend broken hearts - it will set us free! Until a tree plops down upon a line & all that technology is so much plastic cluttering up our lives. You can't even burn the stuff to keep the cold at bay!

Rebecca