Go Go Gadget Whatchamacallit

The other day I read an article on cnn.com about a guy who was released from prison after 8-9 years for being wrongfully convicted of first degree murder. The interviewer followed up with him to see what the past year has been like as a free man. The article struck a cord with me, not because of how easily someone can be wrongfully imprisoned or because I was fascinated about what innocent people go through emotionally while in jail, but because of what he said about cell phones.

The guy told the interviewer, after a year as a normal citizen, that he couldn’t live without his cell phone.

Sounds like a joke, right? This guy just spent almost a decade in jail, where he not only didn’t have a cell phone, but had no need for one and probably never even saw one; where everyone around him was without a cell phone. Once he’s out, he doesn’t have a job, a wife, kids or presumably any friends. Even though he was eventually found not guilty, do you really think any of his old friends are offering him their extra concert tickets or inviting him to their Super Bowl parties? Who’s calling this guy?! And who does he have to call?

I, on the other hand, have a job, a wife, two kids and hopefully a couple more friends than a guy who just got out of prison for first degree murder, and I could go days without noticing my phone has fallen in the toilet.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have my cell phone,” he said. “It has my calendar, my address book, everything on it.”

Well that confirms it. I am now officially less technologically savvy than ex-cons. It’s one thing when kids are more up on all the latest electronic devices than you are (that’s to be expected), but when a convict can integrate himself into our society of mass communications better than you can, that’s embarrassing.

I can use a cell phone, but only for its most primitive function. Games? I think I have some. A calendar? That’s probably on there too. I know I can program any number into it that I want, but I never have. If I want to call someone who’s number I don’t have memorized (which is most of them), I carry around my personal address book that has all my homeys’ numbers in it. Like I said, embarrassing.

I certainly haven’t mastered driving while talking on my phone. Not that I’d want to. I’ll spare you my soap-box rant about how dangerous it is, and just say that I don’t know how people do it physically. I drive a stick shift, so making a left or right turn from a full stop while talking on my phone is virtually impossible. I might as well try to put a sweater on a cat while I’m driving.

And if you want to get a text message from me, you’ll have to send me one first. Even then I’ll curse your name under my breath and probably not respond. I used to think that people who text either have severe stuttering problems or have spent their whole lives smoking and have to attach a voice machine to their throat that makes them sound like a garbage disposal when they talk. Otherwise, to me, texting is like someone with perfect vision learning brail. What’s the point?

Plus, if you’ve ever taken a typing class and have spent years typing on a computer keyboard, texting has to drive you crazy. Even if you have a phone that has each letter on a separate keypad, as opposed to mine that has three letters on the same keypad, you have to work your thumbs like it’s 1988 and you’re playing Super Mario Brothers. And if asked to compare people who talk on their phones while driving to people who text on their phones while driving, I would award Rhodes Scholarships to those who merely talk.

I actually appreciate that texting lets you talk to someone without having to actually talk to them – like e-mail on the go. But most people text back and forth at the same time, making it more like instant messaging. Therefore, any awkward conversation you had hoped to avoid by not actually talking to the person is still potentially a factor when you text. For instance, let’s say Jim and Ted have the following conversation via text messaging:

Jim: “Hey Ted, what’s up?”

Ted: “Hey buddy. How about that game last night? OMG, LOL, BFF, KGB, TNT!"

Jim: “I know. It was TMI, AOL, FYI!”

Ted: “By the way, I didn’t appreciate you getting drunk and feeling up my wife at Craig’s party last weekend.”

At this point, Jim can’t exactly be silent for 10 minutes, then come back and type something like, “Sorry about the pause. My ceiling fan fell down and hit me on the head. I have to go to the emergency room. Later.”

At any rate, I’ve accepted the fact that I’m like the 80-year-old man sitting on his porch yelling at kids to get off his lawn. I’ll grant you that everyone else has figured out something and I’m merely standing on the sidelines. I can refer to the same article for further evidence.

To make ends meet over the past year, the man freed from prison told CNN that he sells stuff on eBay. I remember first hearing about eBay back in the late ‘90s (before it became mainstream) when a friend of mine started buying and selling all sorts of stuff on it. I remember thinking he was crazy. Consider the process: You're buying something you can’t feel or try on or even see without the help of a small, grainy Web picture. Not only that, you're buying it from some kook you’ve never met before, and you're trusting that kook to send you the item after charging your credit card. Let's not forget that none of this takes place until AFTER you wait a couple days to see if other people drive up the price on you. Despite all this, eBay is not only a widely-accepted medium for buying things, but it’s completely ingrained in our culture. I still think it’s crazy.

Yet here’s this guy who jumps right into making money on the Internet after being shut off from the world for nearly 10 years. Gone are the days when ex-cons take jobs mowing lawns, painting houses or teaching driver’s ed.

I guess I’m just slow to catch on to things. I saw an interview the other day with the founder and CEO of Amazon, who has developed Kindle 2 – a device that’s about as tall and thick as a clipboard, but that stores the text of up to 1500 books. You can bring up all kinds of literature on this electronic screen and read them wherever you please. The first thing that struck me was that this is the second version of the device, so it makes perfect sense that I’m just now hearing about either one of them.

My next thought was that Kindle 2 looks like a remarkable piece of electronic equipment that I will be ready to purchase exactly three years after they stop making it. Here is a rundown of other popular developments in technology and my relationship with them:

MySpace? Nope. Facebook? Uh-uh. Twitter? God bless you. HDTV? My TV is HD compatible, but that’s where it ends. Blue Ray? That is different from HD, but competes with it, right? I’m getting a headache. TiVo? This I would like to have, but it’s not old enough. As soon as TiVo celebrates its 20th anniversary, sign me up baby! The iPhone? This would be a huge waste on someone like me.

I do have an iPod, but that’s not cool anymore, is it? At this point isn’t the iPod what CDs were when the iPod first came out? I don’t know what has supplanted it as the latest, greatest thing in music, but I'm sure at least three things have by now.

I have this blog, but I resisted creating it for three years before finally giving in. More than a year later I’m having a great time, but I don’t feel any more computer savvy than I did when I started. I successfully posted a picture on this blog a year ago and haven’t been able to do so since. I don’t know if I’ve forgotten how, or if the process has changed, but a few months ago I spent hours trying to do it again before finally giving up.

So where does my sedentary nature for technology come from? Not sure. It’s not from my friends. If that were the case, they’d all have to be senior citizens.

It’s not my wife. As I type this, she is e-mailing a picture of our kids that she took with her cell phone. Mine can’t even take pictures, but if it could, I sure as hell wouldn’t know how to do it.

Is it my parents? Tough to say. They have at least three computers in their house, two of which are in the same room. On two different occasions, my dad has given me a computer that he felt was too slow or no longer had the capabilities that he was looking for. Plus, he operates his own Web site.

Then again, it was the mid '90s before my parents got a CD player to replace their record/8-track player. And my mom has a cell phone that she doesn’t turn on.

To be fair, they never looked at the record/8-track player as cutting edge. They didn’t have people over and say, “Hey, want to listen to some funky Carly Simon tunes on our new-age music box?” It really just took up space. I think the only reason it hung around so long was because without it, there would be an empty space in the living room.

As for my mom’s phone, there is no “to be fair” comment. She pays for cell phone service, but never turns it on. I can’t explain it. I can only assume it’s because she can’t recognize when it is losing power, and doesn’t know how to recharge it. Therefore, she’s afraid that if it ever loses power, she’ll never again be able to use it. I, on the other hand, know when my phone is dying AND how to recharge it.

Not sure how impressive that is. These days it doesn’t even qualify me to spend time behind bars.

The Power of Our Peers

We, as a society, do a lot of dumb things. Some times we do dumb things to impress people (buy Hummers), other times out of tradition (spend Christmas with our families) and some times just because they’re fun (get drunk and bet it all on black 7).

But nothing is dumber than doing something for no reason other than because someone else has done it. And we, as a society, do that a lot. Not necessarily in the sense of “keeping up with the Joneses” because a lot of times in those instances, there is at least one other reason to justify the dumb things we do or buy. Even though someone might buy a BMW because his neighbor has one, it can be argued that a BMW is a quality, high-performing automobile that is a good purchase whether your neighbor has one or not.

I’m talking about things that cannot be explained in any other context, and why anyone ever did them in the first place is incomprehensible. For instance, using chop sticks. Or voting Republican (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

Below are just some of the things I’ve noticed that people do only because someone else has already done them or is currently doing them:

Run with the bulls – I understand the desire to do something dangerous for an adrenaline rush, like skydiving or rock climbing, but running with the bulls is in a category of its own. If you were planning to do this and showed up on the big day to find you were the only person who would be running from 12 angry bulls, would you still do it?

Camp out for movie tickets – I also understand camping out overnight for seats to a concert or a sporting event that will be the hot ticket. These are one-time events with limited seating. But a movie will play 10 times a day, every day for three to four months at multiple theaters near you. There is no reason to camp out for movie tickets. None. If you have ever done so, please stop reading this and refrain from telling people you know me.

Put Christmas lights on the outside of our homes – It’s cold, a pain in the ass to do, and we spend most of the season looking at the inside of our homes because, as I mentioned, it’s cold.

Send fruitcake as a gift – It’s the most re-gifted present in history, which means you wouldn’t give it to anyone unless someone else gave it to you first.

Participate in eating contests – Not much of a contest if someone else isn’t involved.

Drive El Caminos – You know there is something called the ‘pick-up,’ right?

If this were the ‘70’s I’d say, “Wear plaid bellbottoms.”

If this were any decade I’d say, “Wear fanny packs.”

If this were your parents I’d say, “Jump off a bridge” – Growing up, you no doubt learned that jumping off a bridge wasn’t a good idea even if the whole neighborhood was doing so. Despite the desire of some people to bungee jump, take a dip or end it all, parents didn’t believe any value could be derived from this activity.

Chant “De-fense” at sporting events – If you do this, you’re not only assuming that the team you cheer for is so dumb that they are unable to tell when to play offense and when to play defense, but that the team’s coaching staff is also unable to recognize when to play one or the other. This team, in all likelihood, is not worth rooting for. And let’s face it, if the guy next to you didn’t do it first, would you be the one to lead the chant? Didn’t think so.

Root for the Chicago Cubs – I mean, seriously. A hundred years without a championship? Misery loves company indeed.

Marry Larry King

Marry Liza Minnelli

Put Flavor Flav on TV

Cast Keanu Reeves in movies – The Matrix was 10 years ago. He hasn’t made a good one since.

And I'm sure there are thousands more. Feel free to add to the list below.