Technology: Building a Better Future for You and Me

I really hate technology. Not nearly as much as I think it hates me, but hate is definitely the right word to use

when talking about the relationship between me and technology.

It wasn't supposed to be like that. I remember in grade school science class, watching a movie (on a screen from a movie projector) that told me 'technology was building a better future for you and me.'

Is life better with what science has given us? Yes and no.

Now, I have tried to befriend technology; I read the manuals now and buy the additional warranties 'for $29.95, only at time of purchase,' and I work hard to care for all the gadgets that I seem to need to get through the day.

But still technology leaves me bewildered and dazed, normally staring blankly at the particular gadget that has me currently vexed.

Sometimes technology from far away sets its sights on me, as happened with last weeks front page where, for some reason that I'm still not completely sure about all the Fl/fl and Fi/fi combinations came out as a "?". Sort of poetic isn't it?

I have home phones that won't display caller IDs, an office phone that makes me sound like I'm talking to you from a very distant wind tunnel and a cell phone that only receives voicemail messages every few days, no matter when they are left. That's only the surface of my curse. Every computer I work with goes on the fritz, my satellite radio and iPod work grudgingly like they are supposed to and my alarm clock changes my wake-up time at will.

It gets worse, too. Every piece of technology I purchase for someone as a gift goes to crud after being touched by my hands. My wife has an iPod I gave her and it won't turn off no matter what she does. Why? Because I used it.

Look, I'm not making this stuff up. I would tell you to ask my wife, but as you know I'm not allowed to reveal her identity. But you could ask my coworkers for they see and hear me conversing with my technology sometimes.

As all that is technical collapses around me, I think how sad it is that I seem to need all these things. Most people in their early to mid-teens don't know a world without computers. Most of them grew up with them in their schools and many with them in their homes, but I remember.

I remember writing actual letters to family and friends. I remember sending flowers and buying a birthday card in a store instead of sending an e-card. I remember when you had to go to the theater to watch a movie without commercials, when you had to wait for your favorite song to come around on the radio station's play list (unless you had the record, and I do mean record as in vinyl) and you could only have as much privacy as the telephone chord allowed.

At the risk of sounding like one of those grumpy old men who swore rock 'n' roll was only a fad spawned by Satan, I do really miss the simpler things we took for granted like writing a letter or playing a ball game that included a ball and not a video game controller.

But we have no real choice anymore if we want to get along in this new shiny, progressive world but to learn to live with technology. Even our incoming president uses the internet to reach more people than any previous chief executive has done. It is a smart idea and I think it's pretty cool to get so much infomation. I hope it lasts, but he's gonna' be awful busy for a while.

As for me, I will just have to struggle along trying to communicate with automated customer care centers, fighting with my universal remote and begging my computers to please, please just do what I want already, as the rest of the world zips along the super highway of technology into the future.

Then again, I really do love spell check.