Get Off My Lawn, Technology!

I’m no historical scholar. I’m also no technology guru. I’m no surveyor of societal movements. And, from this paragraph, you can obviously tell I’m no English teacher. All of that aside, it seems to me that today’s electronic breakthroughs, designed to make our lives easier, don’t do what they used to do (i.e. make our lives easier).

Inventions and/or advancements in technology used to do just that – advance us as a society. They improved upon the devices we use in everyday life or introduced something that vastly changed the way we live – like electricity or the automobile.

Nowadays it seems like our “advancements” are actually moving us backwards.

For instance, in the beginning, if a man of increased social stature, like a king or an overlord, wanted to communicate something to another man of similar stature, he would tell a less-prominent man the message and then send him running, possibly hundreds of miles, in the direction of the other king so he could relay the message roughly six months later. Then, just as the lowly runner arrived at the doorstep of the other king, he had to turn around and run back because he realized he forgot the attachment.

As time progressed, man created paper and ink, wrote the message down and tied it to a bird, which may or may not have delivered the note before eating it and pooping on the guy who was still running because his boss was slow to accept the newest technology. Eventually the kings/overlords decided to go back to using people to deliver messages, but because of the ability to write them on paper, the runners delivered hundreds of these letters in one trip and thus the postal system was created.

Communication changed forever with the invention of the telephone. Sure the postal industry still exists, but we no longer have to send a letter to our buddy three counties over to ask if he caught the end of the Bears game. We can exchange thoughts and ideas with someone on the other side of the planet as if they were standing right in front of us. Life has never been the same.

That is… until now.

Now, even though we still have the ability to talk to someone thousands of miles away while we drive, use the restroom or bother people in the movie theater, we opt to use our phones to type messages to the person on the other end of the line. Hmmm. I guess it’s a step up from using phones to hand write messages.

After all, talking to someone lets you easily pick up on their tone of voice and, if you say something funny, lets you hear them laugh. Boo! Who wants that? I’d much rather read about someone laughing, courtesy of the acronym LOL, which tells the typer that what they typed was funny enough to make their friend audibly chuckle.

Except that’s rarely the case. Whenever someone types LOL, they usually mean, “What you just typed was mildly amusing and may or may not have caused me to smile, but that’s about it.”

Then there’s the acronym LMAO, which indicates the reader laughed so vigorously that part of their anatomy is no longer attached to their body. This too is usually an exaggeration (except in extreme cases).

In addition to phones having typewriter capabilities, we’ve also made great strides in communicating with people over the Internet. These days we can log on and post a message to a friend or hundreds of friends at the same time. We can also send pictures and links, and receive responses from those same friends. Two of the most popular ways to do this are through Facebook and Twitter. Some of you out there, though, may remember this capability from about 15 years ago when it was called “e-mail.”

Thank God those days are over. E-mail is so archaic. It lets you send a message that’s as long as you want. No thank you! I much prefer to be limited to 140 characters. Plus, e-mail doesn’t let me see those (never-ending) handy updates from my friends on how far they’ve advanced in some online game.

So, given these trends in technological improvement, I’m wondering what’s next. Personally, I hope the airlines adopt a similar model of using an innovation from the past to improve their current efficiency. Perhaps on a trip from New York to L.A., we’ll one day sit in a plane that scoots along the ground as it’s pulled by a team of horses.

Maybe in the future, remote controls will be bolted to our televisions and wheelchairs will be operated by bicycle pedals. I’m sure in no time we’ll all be wearing see-through pants and shoes with holes in them as well. Yay! Oh wait… I think I’m a little late on that last one.

Whatever is on the horizon, I’ll be eagerly awaiting its arrival, shaking my fist at it from my rocking chair on the front porch.

Just Call Me Stretch

A couple weeks ago, I shared a moment in my life from years ago that forever changed the way I view the world. I’m excited to announce that just this past week I experienced another one of these moments. And this time I can say that it will literally change my view from a physical standpoint.

For the better part of 15 years, I’ve thought that I was 5’ 8”. It turns out I am in fact 5’ 9”.

It’s true. Let that sink in for a minute. I’ve spent my entire adult life believing that I’m significantly shorter than I actually am. I don’t know how this happened.

Maybe my doctor got it wrong during a physical way back when. Maybe I’ve heard friends of mine who are the same height say that they’re 5’ 8” and figured I must be too. Maybe I’ve actually grown an inch over the last 15 years, putting me on pace to be just as tall as the average NBA player by the time I’m in my mid-120s.

Discovering the mistake came easy enough. My son was playing with the tape measure, and after I measured his height, he wanted me to check my own. I obliged, showed him the number and then glanced at it myself, even though I knew what it said. Or I thought I knew.

I was both excited and stunned. “I’m a beast,” I thought.

Then I wondered how different my life would be if I had known all these years that I’m tall. Would I have been popular in high school? Maybe my increased confidence level would have helped me talk to girls without wetting myself. I would have always sat in the front row on airplanes for the extra leg room. I certainly never would have bought a two-door Honda Civic. Perhaps my autobiography and Wilt Chamberlain’s would be eerily similar. At the very least, my driver’s license would say that I’m a towering 5’ 9” instead of a diminutive 5’ 8”.

That’s another thing – the government thinks that I’m short. Should I tell them the truth now, or will they punish me for misrepresentation all these years? Do tall people pay more taxes?

My wife reminded me that she’s 5’8” and that I’m taller than her, so she couldn’t figure out why I was surprised. But I always figured female heights are different from men’s, like foot measurements or pant sizes. For a man, a size 34 in pants means something vastly different than what it means for a woman. How was I to know?

One thing I do know – at one of my son’s recent doctor visits, his pediatrician predicted that, based on his current height and age, he would be over 6 feet. We used to wonder where he got the genes to grow that tall. Not anymore.

You’re welcome, son.