On Being Old School...

I was standing at the copy machine today--begging it to please please please do this one little favor for me-- and realized in a flash of insight how pathetically attached to technology we are. Call me crazy, but something's out of whack when your machines take on personalities of their own and you start talking to them like there is an acutal person standing in front of you.

As it happens, our copy machine is the worst. Yesterday she refused to hole punch or staple my supplements and crashed 5 minutes before our meeting--without printing the one page we needed. It was as if that chunky body of nuts, bolts, ink and toner was actually angry at the world and was going to tell us about it, like a teenager whose been told they are too young to go to a party or some other rubbish. Chad was forced to basically molest her in order to get a tiny scrap of paper released from her deepest recesses.

Not to mention my journey round the house this morning to find my mischvious and constantly missing USB-compatible card reader, so I could email the photos resting on my CF flashcard to my editor. No dice. I had to go to the drug store at lunch and convert the files onto a CD. Except the CD drive there wasn't working. Evidently the photo machine was having a bad day too. So I had to come back later when it was fixed and instead of emailing the photos at 10:00 am, it was dark before they arrived safe and sound in her inbox.

Whatever happened to the days of the one-hour photo counter and a stamp?

Well, I'll tell you straight up. They are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO long gone that it's ridiculous.
Those who attempt to hang on are scoffed at and constantly bombarded with demands to, "get with it". It's not so much about keeping up with the Jones's anymore as keeping up with the vast array of newer, brighter, bigger/smaller, and better.

But my drama filled experience with our copy machine has got me thinking that maybe they're on to something.

Maybe Grandma Polly is actually smarter than the rest of us for refusing to buy a digital camera and printing dock; instead, continuing to use old school Kodak and taking her film into WalMart by the load. Though Kodak soon won't even be making film, except for professional grade, she's held strong to her tangible way of doing things.

Maybe she's right and what you see should still be what you get. The iPhone is pretty sweet (so suculent to the human eye that I would probably give my left and right arms to have one). Blue tooth, wireless Internet, nanotech--well they're all great, but have you noticed there seems to be a new law roaming around the universe that says if something is due, past due or should have been done yesterday, every piece of technology will malfunction at precisely the WORST moment?

You WILL get the blue screen of death on the last question of your timed online midterm--with a mere 30 seconds to finish without penalty. Your printer WILL go offline and/or run out of ink 20 minutes before your 40-page thesis is due (which you have, of course, waited until the last second to print b/c you, of course, waited until the last second to write it and have only finished cranking that baby out a short 45-minute nap ago). Or, and this is the worst, your flash drive WILL REFUSE to work b/c you have neglected to keep that handy dandy protective cap on it and some infinitesimal micro-something-or-other-made-of-silica is now malfunctioning. Yes. That is the worst. All that information sitting right there in your hand and you can't access it. IT IS. THE WORST. EVER.

To the tech-heads and those obsessed with linear progress in the universe, I may be way out of line, but maybe--just maybe--we all need to get a bit old school about life and go back to a more tangible existence, rather than continue to feed the arms race into the invisible, the incalculable, the ineffable.

Maybe.

Or maybe I should just go ahead, sell my soul for an iPhone and be done with it .