So what’s with all these updates? Didn’t the techies get it right the first time? My phone bleeps at me to update my apps. This computer, at which I currently sit writing brilliant and insightful bits of inspiration has about four red lights telling me I have updates to something waiting for me to “install” or “download”. Raise your hand if you remember when download wasn’t even a word.
My local coffee shop app tells me every few months that they’ve updated. Just great. Thanks so much. If I press “update”, it scrambles the app, often erasing my available balances and “perks” information, and I have to call headquarters (which I strongly suspect is connected to the CIA at Langley) and wait while they reset everything. Or, I can ignore the requests to update. In that case, I get “reminders” about every ten minutes. You can’t escape those, because they now want you to tell them exactly when you’ll be updating. “Will you update tonight? What time tonight? Before you go to bed? When do you usually go to bed? Did you remember to brush your teeth? Are you using the tooth brushing reminder app? If you shut off the light and you haven’t updated, I’ll glow in the dark and beep at you.” It’s at this point you realize that you’re an adult but your smart phone has become your mother.
Our computer had been pestering me to update our “operating system”. It was working well, but I figured that it must know more than I do. We were using Mountain Gorilla or some such wild animal, and it needed to be upgraded to Northern White Rhino. Perhaps I should have gone with Baby Koala – that’s more my style. Anyway, I decided one fateful day to oblige it. After several hours of downloading or uploading, I’m never sure which, we had an impressive rock formation on the screen but nothing else. I called tech support, and the very nice person entered the intestines of the computer, kind of like a tech colonoscopy, and began to work their magic. “Nope, that’s not working.” “What do you see now? Oh, that’s not right. OK, that’s not working either.” These followed commands to open things I never knew were there – I felt like I’d entered the computer’s Chamber of Secrets. On we went like this for about two hours, after which I still had only the impressive White Cliffs of Dover. I believe at this point I suggested to my wife that we really didn’t need a computer anyway, so let’s just leave this as a lovely decorative accent that we could turn on in the morning and look at from time to time. She disagreed, so I was now lugging the beast to the computer store to have them fix it. The geniuses there fixed the computer, installed the new operating system, and wiped clean the hard drive so everything we had on the computer was gone. Of course that included all the user names and passwords that I’d neglected to write down in a notebook, as everyone tells you to do. I didn’t need to do that because the computer saved it all for me. Now I was counting all those little dots and trying to figure out what combinations of names, past addresses and birthdays with dashes and exclamation points I’d mixed in for security. The one bright spot was that they didn’t charge me anything, although I’d already paid for the online update. Back in business after what I now think of as the Burning of Atlanta, and trying to remember what was there before the update. I’ve been asked frequently since then to “back up everything on a cloud”. As a native New Englander, trusting weather of any sort just seems risky, so I’ve put the important stuff, like my brilliant writing, on a zip drive and hope those don’t become obsolete too. The way the tech folks are bouncing us around, USB ports will be long gone by the time I need a new computer, and my dazzling insights, like many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, could be lost to the ages.
My phone is now bugging me to “update”, but as you can see I’m a bit gun shy. I just charged it up and it’s shut down completely. Can’t turn it on – just a dark screen. Must be some sort of an electronic protest, so I’m off the phone store later today to see what’s up with that. This phone was a replacement because I had a rather tragic accident. Was at a concert in Boston, at Symphony Hall. The person next to me put down her seat, and I didn’t realize my coat pocket containing my phone had flopped over into her seat. The result was a phone that now had an unintended 90 degree angle, and glass doesn’t bend all that well. I knew it was serious when I went to the phone store and everyone there, including all the staff, came to look at it and share a laugh. That was not quite the sympathetic response for which I was hoping.
Moving on, I’ve developed a theory about technology in general, and electronic devices specifically. While the giants of the industry commit huge amounts of money to developing new stuff, which is great, they also employ thousands and thousands of people to find ways to disrupt what we already have. That way, we can’t just be happy with our old computers, tablets, and phones, which are working just fine, thank you. No, no, these deeply troubled people need to make them “more fine”. Or they’re pushing us constantly toward the edge of that cliff of buying new stuff. A friend of ours, who is like me only about ten times worse, had to replace her old computer. I went with her, which is a bit like having Archie Bunker for tech support. Anyway, the sales person was showing her all of the latest features. Seeing the look on her face, a mixture of bewilderment and resistance, I finally pulled him aside and told him he was trying to explain nuclear weapons to Joan of Arc. Buying new hardware is scary for me because, not only does everything look different, now I’ll have to “install”, “download” (or “upload”), transfer, reset, upgrade, back up and try to remember all my passwords. Maybe I’ll be like that older couple in the cable commercial where their son tells them he can’t be their tech support any more, so they go to voice-activated everything. Hey, maybe I could even have my drone bring me cookies! Anyone know the drone cookie update?
I'm Thinking...No! 