You probably thought it was Mark Twain or Moses who first used the expression, “Misery loves company.” But you were wrong. It was actually John Ray, an English botanist, who lived from 1627 to 1705. (In the 1950s there was a singer by the name of Johnnie Ray, but I doubt he was related.)
The reason I happen to know John Ray’s name is because I looked it up on Google, the most mind-boggling, glorious invention since the wheel. No matter what your question might be, within seconds Mr. Google not only gives you the answer, but also provides related material and sources to pursue. It’s like having Albert Einstein in your office.
Where does Google get all its answers? How does it retrieve them so fast, especially given the fact that there are a million other people asking questions at the same time? How does Google make a profit when it provides this service free? I don’t know. But I do know there are 32,000 ounces in a ton, and the Empire State Building was designed by the architectural firm of Shreve Lamb and Harmon. Amazing.
The potential of technology is wondrous indeed. The problem is that while technology permits the actualization of extreme flights of one’s imagination, most of us lag far behind in our ability to apply it. At this moment, there are brainy young people trying to come up with new tricks a computer or television set can be programmed to do, given the capabilities of the newest little chips. One of them says, “Hey, you know how when you use Amazon to buy a book or DVD, the screen will show the last things you bought, the last things you looked at, and then it will show a list of items it thinks you might be interested in? Why don’t we do that with our cell phone product? When someone calls you, and you’re not able to answer, their screen will say, ‘He can’t answer just now, Aunt Betty, but his calendar shows he’s scheduled to have lunch with you on Tuesday at noon at Murray’s. Meanwhile, he’d like to play your favorite song, “Waltzing Matilda,” on your teeny-weeny cell phone speaker. The lyrics will appear on your teeny-weeny screen if you’d like to sing along.’”
The others in the room will cheer. “Great idea,” says one, “but let’s also scroll across the bottom of the screen the names of all the singers who’ve ever recorded ‘Waltzing Matilda,’ so you can just push the order code and the song will be instantly downloaded onto your computer.”
Another says, “If we’re going to do that, let’s also . . .”
By the time they get done, they’ll have produced yet another technological marvel that most of us won’t ever use because there’s no need for it. Or, more likely, using it will be so complicated we won’t remember how to do it.
The $2,000 I spent for the advanced global positioning system in my car might just as well have been thrown in the nearest sewer. I can’t work it, despite the hour of instruction I got when I bought it. By the time I got home, I’d forgotten everything.
My cell phone is capable of amazing things, according to the salesman. Unfortunately, it will never do any of the amazing things while I’m around because the keys are so tiny I can’t read the letters. Even if I put on my glasses, my fingers always end up pressing two buttons at a time. I finally gave up and bought a Jitterbug, a new cell phone that has only three buttons: one reads “911,” in very big type; another reads “Home,” which calls home; and the third reads “Operator.” You press it, and just like 50 years ago, a live operator answers and places the call for you. It’s a phone for simpletons, and it’s wonderful.
Just because the technology exists to make phones and cars and computers perform a dazzling array of tricks doesn’t mean we need or even want them to do it. Some people can’t get enough high-tech wizardry. (Oddly enough, most of them seem to be considerably younger than I.) But for an awful lot of us, too much gimmickry and too many multi-task capabilities render the device unusable. I wonder if John Ray might also have said, “Sometimes we’re too smart for our own good.”
