Into the Future

Some of us remember a time, perhaps in the 1960s when the 21^st century was looked upon as the ultimate utopia.

We were told we would have refrigerators with computers in the door where we could check off grocery items as they ran out (rather than having to do something as old-fashioned as write a list!), and when we had enough items on the list, send it to the local grocery and our groceries would be delivered to our doors.

We were assured we would have robot maids, like Rosie from The Jetsons.

We would have flying cars.

We would have wrist watches that would allow us to make phone calls, as Dick Tracy could do.

Doctors would wave salt shaker-looking gadgets over us to get a comprehensive diagnosis of our well-being, just like Bones did on Star Trek.

And perhaps we would be able to beam from place to place from a transporter room rather than using planes.

We would have the option of living on Mars or a space station, and perhaps vacation on the moon.

There would be so much gadgetry to make our lives easier, it was almost inconceivable.     

Ah yes. The future.

In reality, there were computers – PCs and laptops, something they never predicted – and cell phones.

Yes, the fridge did catch up to the computer age. There are apps on our cell phones that allow us to order our groceries – and even our fast food – and have them delivered. We can even order almost anything from Amazon and have it delivered within a day.

Thankfully – especially living in New Jersey, where the driving is horrible and turn signals are optional – there are no flying cars. Indeed, people’s drones are bad enough.

We do have wrist watch phones, but they still need to be synced with cell phones.

Medicine hasn’t quite caught up with Star Trek – nor has travel – but there are big machines to do those diagnostics, and I’m sure one day they’ll be the size of salt shakers.

We also haven’t got our robot maids, for which I’m dreadfully disappointed. The closest we’ve come is the Rumba.

Vacations are still earth-bound.

But our advances haven’t been without drawbacks.

Remember Y2K?

And while nearly everyone has a laptop or tablet, and every child seems to have a phone, they haven’t made life easier, and they certainly haven’t made us a more civilized society.

It hasn’t made us freer. People are enslaved by their phones. They can’t tear their eyes from them. Walk down any street, and you’ll find pedestrians with eyes glued to the screen.

Try having a conversation with someone who is physically standing next to you. Even loved ones usually lose in competition with an incoming text.

And while some talk, most don’t want to talk to others. They prefer texting.

People call one another hoping no one will answer. Leave a message at the tone. Better yet, text.

Children don’t go outside to play. Good heavens, it might be too hot or too cold. Heat index and wind chill determine whether or not there is outdoor recess in schools. And the poor dears might not have hats and gloves. When I was in school, it was considered the parent’s responsibility to make sure a child had those things, and the child’s responsibility to wear them.

Besides, children would rather stay inside and “play” on their computers or phones, where their playmates are in cyberspace, not in the same room.

Adults “friend” people online, while actual friendships often languish in preference to the electronic.

And the negative result of all of these “futuristic” advances is that we have lost contact with being human – or at least being civilized.

You can be anyone online. No one need know your true identity. While many people are the same online as off, the anonymity of the internet has given people license to be horrific excuses for human beings.

If someone disagrees with your opinion online, rather than having a conversation to further understanding, or at least explain why you feel as you do, there is more likely to be an attack of insults. Snowflake seems to be the insult of choice. If you’re conservative, the worst you can say of someone is that they’re a liberal snowflake.

It doesn’t matter whether the person is a liberal, conservative, moderate or being from mars. If they disagree with the other person’s opinion, they are the enemy.

We have become such a rude, bullying society since the advent of the internet that tolerance has gone out the window. This bullying rudeness has, with the blessing of a variety of politicians, bled over into actual interactions in the real world.

Yes, this is a sweeping generalization not true of everyone in the world. There are decent, civilized people in the world. But they’re being drowned out by those who are incapable of admitting – or even realizing – there are valid opinions on the other side.

There is a feeling of anger and rudeness about the world that I don’t remember growing up. We had fears of an enemy, but it wasn’t your next door neighbor. It was the leaders of another country: The Nazis, the Communists.

We didn’t walk around with a chip on our shoulders, waiting for the person standing next to us to say the wrong thing so we could start an argument.

And we certainly didn’t live in fear of going places because we might not come home alive.

Don’t believe me?

When was the last time you thought better of beeping your horn at someone who sat at a green light because they might turn around and shoot you?

When was the last time you decided to order online rather than going to the mall because of a recent spate of shootings at malls?

Have you stopped attending religious services because of shootings in churches, synagogues and mosques?

Perhaps that hasn’t come home to roost where you are. Or perhaps you’re one of the ones who concealed carries “just to be safe.”

I have more than once swerved on a highway rather than beeping at someone who’s crossed the dotted lines because I didn’t know if they might be an angry person with a gun.

Maybe my reactions have more to do with the fact that I work in schools.

One day there was a threat by a student in one of those schools. He planned to shoot up people in the school. While they assured us he wasn’t in school that day, and there was significant police presence in the school, I had my car keys with me at all times, and knew the closest door to the outside everywhere I went. If there was a lockdown and the opportunity presented itself, I was going to run, not cower in a fetal position in the back of a classroom.

Maybe it’s the little things like that that keep me angry just below the surface.

I’m impatient with other drivers because I’m trying to get home, get to my safe place, before anyone can hurt me.

It’s a hell of a way to live.

Maybe that’s why I’m so anxious to retire. Maybe that’s why I’d prefer to live in another country – one without guns.

Gadgets

I have been accused of having to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21^st century. This, I believe, is not only untrue, but also an unfair assessment of who I am.

People assume that, because I don’t have the latest model of something, I’m somehow not modern.

Not so.

I like gadgets as much as the next person. But frequently I find myself saying, “That’s really cool. What do I do with it?”

Despite having a laptop and a Surface, I wanted an iPad – or I thought I did.

When I got my smartphone, my phone company was running a special deal on iPads, so I got one.

Cool.

Except the only keyboard is on-screen.

I’m a tactile kind of person who prefers the feel of a real keyboard. But I can deal, except that I tend to make a lot more mistakes with an on-screen keyboard. Like the phone keyboard, it tends not to be whole hand, much less two-hand friendly.

And then there’s the fact that the iPad has no thumb drive compatibility, so anything on the iPad is non-transferrable to any other device unless I send my work via email. What a hassle!

So, my iPad is basically only used for an Irish language app that I use because the iPad screen is better for that than a phone screen.

Oh, but you can take pictures with it!

Yeah. There’s nothing dorkier, in my humble opinion, than using something that cumbersome to take pictures.  That’s what seniors do to try to prove they’ve come into the digital age to so they don’t have to use their reading glasses.

Oh, but games!

Do I look like I’m 10? I have no desire to get roped into Fortnite.

I spent several months once playing Diablo in my free time instead of doing something useful. I couldn’t get past a certain level in that, and realized, eventually, that all I was doing was raising my cortisol level for no very good reason. I can do that driving to work every day.

And most of the game apps seem to be the same game in different colors.

Having to wait through commercials is annoying, and I don’t like any of the games enough to pay a monthly fee for them just to skip the commercials.

Of course, I can use it for answering emails or social media. But I prefer my laptop for that, since it has that nice clicky keyboard that has room for two hands typing.

The only thing I hate about my laptop is the more modern thing on it: the touchpad. No matter how I try, I can’t get the cursor to cooperate, so I have to use a mouse, instead. I’m good with a mouse. I just wish the mouse disabled the touchpad the way it did on my previous laptop.

“Why don’t you just use the touch screen?”

I don’t mainly because I usually forget it has one. I find the mouse faster, anyway. And, since it’s already connected –

So I get called a Luddite.

The first time someone called me that I had never heard the word before. Someone had to explain it to me.

But that’s not who I am.

I also have a Surface, for no better reason than I thought it was cool.

What I like about the Surface is that it’s lightweight, dual voltage, and has a detachable keyboard for those of us who prefer tactile keyboards. And, I can attach a mouse and use it just like a laptop. I mainly use it for travel.

What I don’t like about it is it’s slow on the internet. I don’t spend much time answering emails or going on social media when I’m using it because the slowness is so frustrating.

Of course, that’s a good thing on vacations. I’m not distracted by the internet. The main reason I bring it with me is to download my pictures and title them daily so I don’t forget which castle or cathedral I have a picture of.

Yes, I can feel your eye roll. Yes, I use a digital camera. A DSLR. One of those big things.

Why?

It was an upgrade from my 35 mm camera that I still have but seldom use. It takes much better pictures than the phone or a point-and-shoot, and I can do a lot more creatively with it. I don’t have to limit my photos because of the expense of film, and I don’t have to worry that an entire vacation’s worth of pictures didn’t come out. On my honeymoon, I lost an entire roll of film somewhere between England and Ireland.

I still prefer the ease and the feel of the 35mm over any other camera I’ve ever used.

But you have an iPhone, you say.

Yes, I do. It’s a phone. I use it as a phone and to send texts. 

True, it has a camera, which, in my opinion, takes so-so pictures. It’s good for that in a pinch, but not for real photos.

As for the keyboard, it’s slightly better than the one on my old flip phone, but hardly something I could comfortably type emails, much less a blog on.

And as for reading, in a pinch, for brief periods, I can use it in place of my Kindle.

Yes, I have a Kindle. I got it for reading when I travel. It’s probably 10 years old by now, ancient by tech standards. But it works. And it’s smaller than the Surface, so even though I have the Kindle app on all of my tech appliances, it’s more convenient on a plane than pulling out the Surface, and easier to read than using the phone. And it still works, so I don’t need an upgrade. And I can read it outside, which I can't with other devices.

But I do prefer real books.

Even my iPhone is now two years old. It’s a 6s that I got a few days before the iPhone X was released. Why didn’t I get the X? Who would spend over $1,000 on a phone in the first place, much less one that will be considered obsolete in two years? And then, there are “improvements” that I don’t want or like. My 6s works, and is a convenient size. It will meet my needs until it no longer works.

I’m not opposed to new things. I was raised to take care of my things. When I was a child, if I broke something, I didn’t get another one. Now, if I have something that works and meets my needs, I see no reason to get another one. It rankles to have to replace something that works because the internet companies have rendered it redundant.

I will say that I like the GPS on my phone much better than the independent GPS that I had. That was difficult to program and didn’t work in other countries.

But I will never be attached at the hip to a phone.

I originally got a mobile phone because the powers that be had done away with pay phones. Because I travel long distances for work, my husband thought it was necessary in case of emergency.

Even Superman had to make adjustments.

So, although I have a variety of gadgets, they’re not necessarily the most up-to-date ones. And that doesn’t bother me. Call me what you will, but I’ve never been one to cave in to peer pressure, whether it was to smoke cigarettes or buy an iPhone X.

And as for my blogs, I write them by hand in cursive before they ever make it to the computer. Call me old-fashioned if you wish, but I do what works best for me.