Tuesday, March 22, 2011

In a timely and damn near prescient comment, Boo Bear described my desktop as “your rebuilt 1986 DOS computer,” and although the year may have been exaggerated by a decade or two, the spirit of the remark was dead on. You know my relationship with technology, and if you don’t, I’m slow to embrace it and generally wary of any device that enables a constant hail of e-mail, texting, or tweets. Indeed, my policy to date has been to remain two to three cycles behind whatever’s hot, in hopes of escaping this bombardment of communication.

But recently I’ve been questioning whether this approach is sustainable. Now, it’s not like I’ve developed a sudden urge to speak in 140-character bursts. It’s the smaller, more subtle realizations–how Hulu is starting to chug with every successive release of Chrome, for instance, or how Firefox performance is nigh untenable on my trusty box. This phenomenon extends beyond my computer. My cell contract is up for renewal, and with it is an offer for a free phone. Good problem to have, right? When I’m browsing the devices compatible with my text-free plan, however, the list of options seems woefully thin. Most entries appear to have hobbit keyboards attached to them–or no buttons at all!–and the harvest of simple handsets is meek, to put it lightly.

There comes a moment when you’re not just behind the curve in technology, you’re also inconvenienced by it. You’ve gone beyond outdated, in a way, and are instead dragged, kicking and screaming, into the future. I may be at that point. Heck, I might be well past it, and capitulating may be the only choice left. But part of me still wants to dig my heels in, never give an inch. Remember when things were less frenetic, less cluttered? This would be the era when people who weren’t monks could walk from one place to another without bowed heads. It was also an age when operating an automobile and typing with your thumbs were mutually exclusive competencies.