Some People Should Not Be Allowed To Have Technology

Special Guest Contributor Mark O. checks in with his ode to technology- first a nod to the technologically disadvantaged and second, a Norwegian video spoofing how some folks approach a computer. Enjoy!

We all know them. They’re our mothers and fathers, our aunts and uncles, our neighbors and friends. They are The People that Technology Left Behind. Think of it like that old Saturday morning show The Land of the Lost. You know the one…the Marshall family (Rick, Will and Holly) get lost on a rafting trip when an earthquake dumps them over a waterfall into The Land of the Lost. There they encountered dinosaurs they named Dopey and Alice and a little orphaned monkey-boy named Cha-Ka who quickly joined the family.

But I digress. Imagine all of our People that Technology Left Behind (PtTLB’s for short) are just like Cha-Ka, trapped in a world where the clicker is really a clicker, where UHF and VHF channels mean something, and where a record isn’t just something that Guinness keeps track of. These people should be pitied, but in some cases they bring it on themselves. Really now, who can blame your 70+ year old grandfather for not understanding an iPod? Or your sweet old auntie who doesn’t even have a cordless phone, let alone understand net-to-phone? These age-challenged folks have been through plenty of change in their lives (e.g. a World War, color TV, integrated schools) so just because they can’t hang with today’s techno-babble we should give them a break.

No, the PtTLB’s that piss me off are the ones who should know better. Those who remember Frogger, Zaxxon and the Mario Brothers before they got their own game but still refuse to embrace today’s electronic wizardry.

Take my friend and co-worker who just bought a new portable GPS for her car. She’s angry because “Jill” (so named because of the electronic voice she chose for it) refuses to learn her preferences for driving routes. Apparently “Jill” wants her to go one way when my friend KNOWS that another route is better. There’s obviously a fundamental problem here…if my friend already knows the route, then why is she using the damn GPS in the first place?

Or how about my buddy that just bought a new 6.1 megapixel digital camera with a 1 GB memory card? He brought it to a party the other day and after every picture he takes you have to wait while he reviews it in the camera and decides if the shot came out right. If not he deletes it (something he’s not very sure how to do yet) and then has to have everyone recreate the spontaneous moment that just passed so he can shoot it again? He simply can’t understand that with the capacity for over 500 shots he can just shoot and shoot and shoot and sort out the pictures later on his computer. And don’t even get me started on his inability to comprehend the pre-flash that happens with the red-eye reduction feature…

And my personal favorite PtTLB, the wife of a friend who, upon seeing him pause a live football game with his TIVO so he could go take a leak and get a beer asked, “But how does it get everyone at the stadium to wait for you?” Really, she did.

I give up.