Gilding the technological lily

One afternoon, back in the 1990's, an old friend and I were philosophizing. The question came up as to what technological development of the 20th century had, or will have, the deepest effect on human society.

Of course: cars, airplanes, consumer electricity, and the atomic bomb were mentioned as possibilities, but we were both in easy agreement that the transistor is the thing that has caused (and will cause much more) change in our civilization, as we call it.

The transistor made the printed circuit board available, which was the embryo of the computer and the other digital electronics that have become so ubiquitous as to be inescapable. All the cars and pickups sold now are loaded with screens that constantly force needless information onto the operator.

Some of their functions are useful, of course, but a large part of them are little more than dangerous distractions to the driver. Electronics are inexpensive, but they give the vehicles an aura of technological sophistication, which we all love, and are good selling points for the manufacturers. The car companies are gilding the electronic lily in the cause of our sacred capitalism.

I bought my first cell phone in the late 1990's, and, by far, it was the best phone I ever owned. It could call and it could receive calls. That's all I asked. It was so durable that even after being dropped into a swimming pool and two hot tubs, after a few days of drying out, the unit was fully operable all three times. More than twenty years later I have a state of the art cell phone, which has brought me to tears numerous times, and things still aren't right with it.

I bought the thing two months ago, and everything went well for ten days or two weeks. I hadn't made the first payment, yet, but one day I hit a button out of sequence, and the phone locked up as if it had been stolen.

I played with it for a week or so, but finally gave up and took it back to the experts at the shop. They had it for a couple of weeks, but all their attempts failed. A long phone call to the company techs solved nothing. Of course, there was no warranty for things like that.

To add irony to misery, when I first started the phone, it somehow invaded my laptop and pad, changing email passwords and making me incommunicado with the digital world. That problem is partially resolved, but a lot of hours of frustration remain until the new marvel works as well as the one I bought twenty years ago.

I ended up buying another phone, which cost me about two weeks of Social Security, which I started paying in 1958 when we still had the old crank phone on the wall of our house. That phone never failed or faltered, and we could listen to the neighbors' conversations. That's an app I can't find on the new wonder I have now.

A young friend of mine once commented to me that the people in my age group rarely use their given names on their email addresses. I surely don't.

I think it's an artifact of the 1960's, when many of us were dabbling in illegal drugs and thinking unpatriotic things when Nixon and his nefarious cronies were running the country. We were right then, but Google has far surpassed what the government even dreamed of fifty years ago. And we're willing subjects.

Last Tuesday my sister and I drove the 13 miles to Cascade to get a few groceries and have lunch. I took my new phone because I have a new phone. I left it on, but I didn't make or receive a call during the hour I was in town. The phone stayed in the car – listening and watching, I guess.

The next morning, when I fired up the phone to see what the weather was in Yellow Knife, Canada, or some other place that doesn't matter to me, the first thing that appeared on the screen was the question: "How did you like the Buffalo Grill? Was it appealing to you? Was the food satisfactory?"

That scared me. I didn't even know the name of the cafe where we ate. But I'm too old to care now; they can track me all they want.

What allows the electronics the transistor made possible to be such a potential is that computers can plan other, better computers, and then design and build robots to build the robots that will assemble the more powerful computers.

About the only phenomenon of which computers are incapable, and will remain so, is how to make a dime from a cow. That's what we need – not Netflix or You Tube.