Digital Fruit

I took a short weekend visit to Fresno this weekend to a wedding anniversary celebration. My observations during this trip, among other observations, highlight the diminishing returns of technology.

Perhaps it's just me. Perhaps it only happens to me due to my subdued personality, my inability to engage people in different social contexts such as breakfast at Perko's, dinner at a banquet hall, lunch at Thai Basil -- I find that I am ignored by virtually everyone around me while in these situations as they dwaddle with their cellularized telephones, blackberries, treos, MP3 players, and other "wonders of the digital age."

I ate breakfast at Perko's on Saturday and while at the table, my mother-in-law jawed on the phone for fifteen minutes, my sister-in-law spent 20 minutes deleting texts or something while the cursed thing kept beeping at the table, my son's iPod was loud enough to be heard, and my wife received two texts and was compelled to respond then and there.

I hadn't seen my friend Mark in almost a year and a half. I met him for lunch a month ago and it took him a full 20 minutes to stop e-mailing via Treo. Lunch was nearly over before he finally put that damn thing down.

Some time ago, when my sister-in-law was ready to drive home to San Diego, she spent 20 minutes off the I-5 exit entering her destination into her new OnStar. She's been driving home for thirty seven years -- why did she now need to have some talking machine on her dash to tell her how to get home?

I ate lunch with my friend Joe just last week. We discussed our upcoming hunting trip and he spends a half hour on his Blackberry trying to load in the Cabela's catalog web page for goose decoys.

What is it with all this?

It's not a generational thing -- everyone from nine to ninety is attached to the hip to these things, and it's only going to get worse. I can only imagine what it must be like for a shy boy at a school dance trying to ask a girl to dance as she intentionally ignores everyone while fuckering about with her phone all night long. Ignoring made easier through the magic of technology. Texting while driving is all but impossible to enforce. Dying made easier through the magic of technology.

One thing I've thought about has been the gradual elimination of a number of human jobs that used to route phone calls for business. Instead of hiring a human with their bothersome salary, vacation, and health care needs, we've gone down the "press #" route where the customer is now shouldering the responsibility to route his/her own inquiry -- and over half the time you press a series of digits to talk to a live person anyway. Wasting time made easier through the magic of technology.

All of this is maddening to me. Maddening. I don't think I'm going to survive the new age. My sister gave thanks last week to digital fruit -- her new Blackberry. She's a bona-fide convert and is hopeful she won't develop this crack-like addiction that has affected the rest of our culture. Perhaps I am only delaying the inevitable by postponing my own entry. Perhaps someday I will be forced into it, I'll get addicted, and I'll be blogging from hotel rooms, beach fronts, funerals, church, my dad's cabin, casino halls, thrash metal concerts, weddings, and everywhere I possibly can while ignoring every other live human around me.

I'm waiting for the Boysenberry to arrive before I take the plunge.