Historical May 1996 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
More is less. That’s always been the case, but it’s even more true in today’s fast-paced society where technology offers a new convenience or labor-saving device each week.
If it’s pluggable, you can be sure that more is definitely less.
After all, I have a computer, so why does it take me longer to write things?
In fact, I have three cornputers, two at home and one at work, but I don’t seem more efficient.
My letters haven’t gotten shorter, my memos are no more to the point, and now I can not only lose papers, I can also lose disks.
I have RAM, ROM, and megabytes of memory, but I can’t figure out what I’ve titled that memo I wrote last November, so I can’t find it.
I have spell-check in my computer, but it doesn’t catch the differences in homonyms, among to, too, and two, for example, so I carelessly send out error-laden letters too colleagues and friends to. Their spelled write butt or out of context; sea?
Then there’s the television.
We used to have five channels — 2, 4, 5, 9, and 11.
Then channel 30 UHF (sounds like something Maxie, my dog, would say) came, so we had six offerings.
The bad news was that there wasn’t much worthwhile on television, but the good news is that there weren’t many places where you could watch it. Now, because I’m a cable kind of guy, I have at least 40 channels.
But there are no more good offerings than there used to be. What’s happened is that there are more bad things to see.
We used to only have five options for tedium and pandering, now there are scores of offerings to dull the mind. So the proportion of good versus bad television, never strong to begin with, has declined dramatically — or is it melodramatically? (This complaint about what’s on the tube, of course, excludes rich offerings like ESPN, the all-sports channel, and WRYY, the all-girls-doing-aerobics-in-skimpy-outfits channel.) I mean, how many times can you watch reruns of “My Mother, The Car,” “Baywatch,” “Bonanza,” or “I Dream Of Jeannie”? (OK, scratch Baywatch from this list. You can always watch Baywatch reruns, and, in fact, they’re better without the sound.) I know, snail-breath, you’re thinking, “What about the microwave oven?” HA! Surely you can’t suggest that microwaves have either (a) improved the quality of eating or (b) saved time! Yes, there are some,. redeeming features. Thanks to my trusty microwave I can now have popcorn in three minutes, 15 seconds, and thanks to microwave when I finally found where I sat my coffee cup, I can once again have piping (Lorie) hot coffee.
But as far as quality?
In my freezer, even as I write, the first wife has fifteen, count ’em, frozen TV dinners. (You should know you’re in trouble eating anything that has “TV” in the name!) They range from Lean Cuisine, to Healthy Choice to Stouffer’s Mainstays to Gourmet For One, but what they all share .is the same taste: chicken. Even if the dish is beef or fish, the taste is chicken. Enchiladas, fish-sticks, egg rolls, or hush puppies, it doesn’t matter; they all taste likechicken. And as far as saving time, if it’s true that the microwave saves time, answer these questions: if you use the microwave, Do you leave work earlier? Do you have more time to relax? Are there now extra minutes in your day? Spending the time you gain by using the microwave is a bit like spending the money that you saved at the Eddie Bauer sale. Truly, what the microwave does best is tell time; it is always accurate and never needs winding.
Finally, under advanced technology, labor-saving devices that are designed to make our lives easier, let’s look at the car phone. You’ve heard the statistics about accidents and car-phones, right?
If you’re talking on the phone while driving, you are 6.7 more times to be in an accident than if you’re just driving. Well, no wonder!
The other day while on a field-trip, driving to Chesterfield so see the skinning of naugahides, I had seven people call me in my car. Two were selling aluminum siding, one asked if I would like a subscription to the POST (which I already get, I told her in no uncertain terms), two were wrong numbers, one was a real estate agent looking for my wife, and one was someone from work, calling to complain about something that could have waited until the next day (“It’s not a complaint,” she said, “but a suggestion”).
I used to be able to escape in my car, being unreachable for as long as 10-15 minutes, zipping along listening to the Archies or the Four Tops. No I’m only seven button presses away from anyone who wants me. No, I’m not a Luddite, but in my next life I’m going to come back immune to technological improvements that really aren’t improvements at all.
In my next life I’ll be a primate at the zoo. No job to speak of, room and board taken care of, no need to worry about the economy or Bosnia, and no where near an electrical socket. Pass the bananas, will you?
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, May 1996.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1996_05.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
