Technology, You Crazy!!! Part Deux

Above is a clip from the PBS smash hit sitcom, "Shining Time Station". I remember watching STS as a kid and being mesmerized by the Jukebox gang. Tex and Rex were musical geniuses, and Tito made Elton John look like Rick Astley, or better yet he made Garth Brooks look like Chris Gaines. Those dudes just sat down in that jukebox all day long doing nothing, but when somebody popped a nickel in that coin slot, they jumped into action, and man did they deliver the funk.

I remember thinking that was how jukeboxes actually worked. I viewed them not as machines, but rather as boxes filled with tiny people that made the juke possible. I thought the same about computers. There are tiny people inside of there that make the game Oregon Trail work, right? Those were simpler times. Your only job was to try to not die of Dysentery.

Every Ducking time

Long before the invention of the Worldwide web, James Cameron tried to warn us of our impending doom as slaves to the machines with the movie "Terminator". Now here we are, thirty years later and we have, Kindles, Tablets, Ipads, and Iphones. When was the last time you had a conversation with anyone for more than ten minutes without either one of you looking down at your phones? We don't even own phones anymore. Phones own us.

One thing is for sure. There are definitely not tiny little people inside these smart phones making them work. Tex and Rex would never have made some of the mistakes my phone makes these days. Let's get ducking drunk? Seriously, Iphone? Yeah, because that's what I meant to say. What the hell is wrong with you? I swear my phone auto corrected the word minutes to llamas once. I typed.... Let's meet there in twenty.... Then my phone must've been like, "Oh, I know. He's going to say llamas. Yeah, that's right. Let's meet there in twenty llamas. it makes perfect sense. I'm such a genius."

Now I'm just sitting there trying to comprehend this unprecedented turn of events, without even thinking about what was going on in my friend's brain. For all he knows I meant to type the word llamas. Even worse, he has no idea what time I want to meet at the bar. He's probably staring at his phone, thinking, "Twenty llamas? How long is that? I've never seen this increment of time before. It's probably very confusing for him, kinda like the first time I heard the term fortnight. I remember thinking, "Is he trying to say fartnight? What is a fartnight?

This is a Fartnight.

Eventually my phone will make up for its gaffes by randomly opening Pandora for no reason and playing a crunchy tune, or having a faster than normal internet connection for a day or two. Then I'd forgive my phone and we would become friends again. Even though, the very fact that I was mad at it in the first place was ridiculous. I'm all, "Stupid internet/Gps/Mp3 player phone, that's also a Flashlight somehow. I hate you."  I remember having a pager at one point in my life. How did I get so spoiled? Nowadays, whenever I can't get Facebook to load in a timely fashion, I flip a lid. I flip multiple lids. I call in bomb threats to the lid factory and demand that every lid currently in production be rotated 180 degrees. Am I overreacting? Yes. Am I taking the lid flipping metaphor too far? Perhaps.

We rely on our phones for everything these days. Everything. Need to convert Kilometers into Miles? There's an app for that. Need to know the barometric pressure in the Gulf Coast? There's an app for that. Need to iron a shirt? There's an app for that too. I remember when phones were only used to make phone calls. Now, if anybody other than a telemarketer or bill collector calls, it's weird and I usually answer like this...

What do you want from me???

 What the hell did people do before the internet, anyway? Imagine having a heated debate with a friend of yours over something trivial, and not being able to immediately look it up, to prove your buddy wrong. Instead, you'd be like, "Just wait man! Just wait! The new Encyclopedia Britannica will be released in six months. Then we'll see whether or not Sean Penn was in "Ghostbusters" Oh we'll see!!"

Being Techno-illiterate doesn't even speak as a detriment to your character anymore. It's just that once you become comfortable with one device, they release another. I heard somebody say once that The Iphone5 is the best way to kill time while waiting in line for the Iphone6. Technology is advancing at an alarming rate, and all you can do is try to keep up with the times. Unless, you're the Yellow Pages, and feel like phone books are still the wave of the future.

Here ya go. You can finally get rid of that internet thing you've been hanging onto.

I just fear for the day that I show up to work only to find out I've been replaced by Siri. I would march into my bosses office and be like, "What the hell does she have that I don't?" Then he would reply, "Oh, I don't know? How about the answer to any question I could ever ask, Ever. Also she's sassy and has a great sense of humor, and I think I may be in love with her."

Oh Siri, you are a riot.

Then I would bump into my boss down at the unemployment office, because Siri wound up taking his job too. "James Cameron tried to warn us" , I'd tell him. We have automated Check outs at grocery stores, automated bank tellers, and computers for ordering built into the tables at restaurants. The machines are already winning. The worst part is that there aren't tiny people inside these devices making them work. Our economy could use the added jobs.

Local Jukebox union 238, now seeking apprentices

Is Siri going to take our jobs? How would we know? Our only way of finding out would be to ask her, and I doubt she would tell us. I guess we could ask Jeeves, but he's been a little butthurt, over Siri's popularity, so asking a Siri question might not go over so well. I think we're safe from the machines for now, but there's no telling what could happen in the next ten years. I'm sure there will be plenty of times in that span where we will have to take a deep breath, take a step back, and say Damn, Technology you Crazy!!!
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