March 22, 2013--Smart

"I don't want a phone smarter than me," said Nancy the other morning at the news shop.

This came up when we were discussing telephones--the new phone at the shop doesn't allow them to take credit cards and she was feeling frustrated that they were told they'd have to wait two weeks to have a new hard-wired one installed.

I thought her line about smart phones was both funny and smart. I too don't want one of those phones. And, confessedly, maybe for the same reason. So if I can cover up with a little humor my own feelings of inadequacy about being passed by by time and technology, all the better. And, so, thank you Nancy for a way to think about this.

I hate seeing couples in restaurants not talking while waiting to be served but rather both engaged in texting, or whatever it is that they might doing with their iPhones. I've joked that maybe they're so used to texting and tweeting that that's how, even when they're together, they engage each other.

I hate it in the morning when we're in the elevator and someone gets on with her head buried in an android and doesn't even look up to exchange a perfunctory hello.

I hate it while walking down Broadway when someone reading text messages bumps into me as if I don't exist.

In fact, this feeling of not existing is a metaphor for my problem--unless I get with the technologies and social networking of the 21st century I'll remain relegated to the 20th. Just more evidence that I'm getting old, irrelevant, and essential things are passing me by at warp speed.

So I turned to the history of other paradigm-shifting innovations to see if that might offer some reassurance, some comfort about my own fear of obsolescence. But unfortunately that didn't work very well.

When the Gutenberg printing press of 1436 made the production of books inexpensive--making hand-written manuscripts obsolete and democratized reading--there was great resistance to popularly available books by the noble and priestly elites that had a monopoly on learning and power since hand-produced manuscripts were rare and expensive. They feared that the proliferation of knowledge that printed books would lead to would undermine their hegemony. And they were right--there was soon the Protestant Reformation and one-by-one over the centuries monarchies and absolute governments were overthrown.

Then I thought about economic innovations such as machines powered by steam and then electricity which lead to the Industrial Revolution. Craft workers sensed the implication of these new ways to manufacture goods and some--Luddites--went about smashing the new machines. And they were right to see the threat to their previously central place in the world.

And then there have been the cascade of communications technologies from the telegraph to the telephone to radio and TV and now the Internet. All along the way there were people like me decrying and resisting, ostensibly worried about the negative impact these innovations would have on the economy, power structure, culture, and--most important--them. And in all instances they were right, as I am certain I am.

In every instance from Gutenberg to Zuckerberg even consciousness has been changed--the very ways in which we think, how we perceive, what we value, how we are governed, and moment-to-moment how we live our lives.

So, Nancy, sorry. Clever line about not wanting to have a phone smarter than you, so you'd better get with the program. On the other hand, she does sell physical newspapers and magazines and so . . .

I should leave Nancy out of this. But what about me?

I want to be with it, I want to be cool, I want to be able to "communicate" with younger friends and relatives who don't even have traditional telephones and have already moved on from e-mails. I had better get with the facebooking and twittering and texting (though that could be a problem since I have the beginning of arthritis in my thumbs) or get used to the fact that folks like me are headed for cultural and social extinction.

So it's good that there's an AT&T store nearby where maybe I can . . .