Technology Today

There was a time when I thought that just maybe, I was hanging on to today’s fast-paced technology. I can find correspondence chains on my email, order a wedding gift from an online registry, Snapfish a holiday card, and, when I want to show off, I can ask Alexa to help me with the NYT crosswords. My iPhone is connected to my car speaker, and I even have an Apple Watch, which has a wonderful feature that enables me to find my cell phone.

And yet, the rules of engagement continue to escalate, and once again, I find myself highly dependent on my children to keep up with today’s high-tech demands. On a notepad in my kitchen, I keep a list of technological hurdles so that I am ready to pounce when a young adult walks in my door. This tabulation currently includes, yet is not limited to, getting subtitles back on our TV screen, returning the opened (impulse order) gas fire-pit so I can park my car back in our garage, finding out why my credit card is billed monthly for something I don’t know that I’m getting and helping me reset a few passwords that have slowly elaborated from my birthdate into hieroglyphics. Recently a bank notice informed me that my social security number would be invalid until I could prove the chronological name changes from my birth through a marriage, divorce, and remarriage…and yes, that task was added to my list!

In my defense, I have come a long way from growing up during a time when the height of home technology and neighborly affluence was one color TV and three landline phones. Our TV guide was a section we tore from the newspaper, we had 13 channels to surf, and my siblings and I argued over who would get up to turn the channel. Our phone had no recording ability or call waiting, and if you got a busy signal…you knew enough to try back later. Of course, being “on the phone” meant that one was also tethered to the phone base by a curly handheld connector that everyone liked to wrap around their finger while talking. The phone cord in my parent’s bedroom could barely reach under their closet door when stretched taut, and it was in that dark closet that I could go undetected for hours of private conversations with my high school boyfriend. On the occasions when my mother came into her room and followed the cord behind the closet door, I was in big trouble. Yes, I was aware that no one could call through during my conversation and my mother always claimed to be waiting for a call.

Back then, we could not have imagined a wireless phone with all of the capabilities of today. In addition to being able to text people all over the world, access the internet, check the weather in Florida, and track children who said they were somewhere when you could see they were not.. I think the phone camera has been the biggest game-changer. What a leap from the film that we would take to the drugstore, or mail away, to be developed only to throw away half of the photos because they were unfocused or redundant images. I currently have 3,166 pictures on my phone. I have previewed these pictures, enlarging sections for closer inspection, and deleted any shots that do not flatter me. I then send and occasionally post photos to update family, friends, and random acquaintances of anything fabulous I may be doing.

I can readily admit that I desperately need GPS technology and have never had a good sense of direction. I recall many white-knuckled expeditions, driving my Suburban to away soccer games with a carload of rambunctious kids who were supposed to be starting their warm-ups, and I could not find the field. I would stop at gas stations, some of them twice when the verbal directions were incredibly confusing, and try to remain cheerful with the children while I internally panicked about them all missing the game. Even though my first GPS inexplicably spoke German, another decided that I should only take non-toll roads and kept steering me off the highway. Just last year, a rental car instructed me to cross the state of Florida through an orange grove… my GPS has added years to my life.

My husband’s car is so high-tech that one of us is reluctant for me to drive it… and the concern is not for my safety. His seat automatically adjusts to his exact measurements; his favorite music starts upon command, and the car backs itself out of the driveway. I call his car “The Batmobile” because I’m convinced that it has secret powers that my husband, who is not Bruce Wayne, has not yet been able to access. For me, all of the safety features are too distracting, and between the beeping, the multiview cameras, and the voice activation, I’m a nervous wreck behind the wheel. While my phone automatically charges while simply resting on the console, the dash is so full of knobs it resembles a space shuttle, and trying to specify how I want the car heated could drive me into a wall… except the car would autocorrect and save me. If given the option, I would drive a road version of a bumper car with steel casing, covered in hard plastic and surrounded with spare tires like a tugboat. Ok, throw in my GPS, pandora music, and a coffee maker, and I’m all set.

Sometimes my husband and I surprise ourselves and manage to play music on our outdoor speakers. I once YouTubed directions and single-handedly fixed the garage door opener. I was delighted to successfully subscribe to the Disney channel to watch “Hamilton”… although now we don’t know how to unsubscribe. The quest to keep up with technology is always looming and makes me question if my second marriage should have been a more practical matchup with a much younger tech guy. Although, I can plan a whole vacation in my kitchen, auto-pay my Comcast bill and, more importantly, avoid a trip to the DMV… I am worried about where technology will take me next. So, that tech to-do list remains on my kitchen counter, and if you are under age thirty and walk in my door… you have already been warned.