Tehachapi News

Overall Picture: Some 'progress' mostly irritates us older people

If you're like most folks, you wonder how you ever survived without the innovations that keep flooding into our lives, including computers, cell phones, cars that park themselves and so on. I hate to rain on your parade but the primitive technology that arose in the last few years of the 19th century in many ways had a lot more impact on the way people lived than the complicated stuff we have to contend with today. And it was a lot easier to deal with.

My mom and dad were born in 1895. From the beginning they had telephones, electric lights, indoor plumbing and, before they finished grade school, had ridden in automobiles and seen airplanes fly. It's true they started out with iceboxes instead of refrigerators but in their nearly 60 years of marriage, I don't believe they ever bought any new invention that came with an owners manual. Common sense was all you needed then. I like to think of their era as the customer friendly period of American life.

Dad bought a new car every couple of years after I came along, mostly because, as a newspaper publisher, he had a sweet advertising trade deal with a local car dealer. That was before the IRS got snotty about such things. Back then, I'm sure the dealer never had to show Dad what buttons to hit each time he picked up a new model.

How things have changed, and not necessarily for the better. My wife and I recently turned in a leased Mercedes that I never could fully operate. I don't mean to offend you Germans but the endless electronics on our Mercedes were either beyond my understanding or they quit working entirely, like the time the radiator fan module burned out on a 110-degree day in Las Vegas. If I slowed down below 30 I was in a world of hurt. How I wished for my father's 1937 Ford on that occasion. Come to think of it, I believe I would do fine with a '37 Ford as my everyday wheels.

I've sniveled to you before about the miseries I run into with my computer. I accept these frustrations because I realize you can't put the history of the universe on a quarter-inch chip using the technology of my youth. But why should you need a master's degree to operate a toaster?

I think that what separates me from the younger generation in coping with the new digitalized world is that I grew up being able to see what was going on inside stuff.

But an integrated circuit is, to quote Winston Churchill's description of the inner workings of the Soviet Union, a riddle wrapped inside an enigma. Anyone born since 1985 has genes that enable them to know when to junk a piece of electronics or how to shake it it to get it going again without looking at the innards. I'm used to the old days, when you could watch mechanical parts moving around. If the whatsit was rubbing against the thingamajig you knew immediately that a moderate tap with a hammer would make things right. The last time I tried that with my HP photo printer I found out it's a new age.

It seems you can't pick up anything simple any more. I tried to buy an old-fashioned meat thermometer the other day but even these things have gone high tech. I'm back to just making sure the juice isn't running red. It works for me.