TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

I am a techno-philistine.

I should be better at all this geek-y stuff. I am, after all, a child of the technological revolution. I was there for its onset, which our friend A used to joke “was just a fad”. It started with the Apple II Plus computer. In my case, mostly a fancy typewriter and a console for playing Olympic Decathlon. Now we carry computers around in our pockets – again, mainly for playing games. I remember our first TV remote - the brown Jerrold “converter” with connecting cord. As a too-lazy-to-get-off-my-butt teenager this truly was revolutionary. Now the remote is the size of my thumb, small enough to lose in my lap, let alone the couch cushions, and we haven’t had “TV” for decades. I finished school just in time for the “World Wide Web” to make its way into the public domain. Now ChatGPT could write my graduate dissertation in +/- 10 seconds. I haven’t done a great job keeping up with the Hals-es. I am definitely not a candidate for Nerds on Wheels. When I told M I was writing about my relationship with technology, he not-joking-joked: “You mean about how you are becoming our (password losing, phish bait, “my [blank] is not working”) parents?” This was after I needed his IT help for the third time that day. “Becoming?” More often than I care to acknowledge, I respond to technology in the exact same way that my mother does, at age 85. While we aren’t at the same stage (give it time), we are clearly on the same luddite spectrum.

Take cars, for example. My mom’s last car was a “modern” coupe that looked and drove like a rocket. Getting in required dropping down three feet into a bucket seat that was so low you couldn't reach the door to close it and could barely see over the dash. This car was a highly questionable selection at age 76 when she bought it, and a positively terrifying driver/drive combination at 84. It came equipped with all the “new” bells and whistles like speed control (“why does it keep beeping at me?”), rear cameras and GPS maps. At the end of its tenure, it was ironically like she was driving a Delorian because by then she was operating in what I call ‘Back to the Future’ mode. Her memory is great provided that the topic of recollection is from twenty years in the past. She once inquired: “How anyone finds their way around without a compass?” (true story). Mom’s driving memory sweet spot is an era where she had a large purse/duffle bag permanently grafted to her shoulder that weighed 1000lbs and carried various now obsolete items like her chequebook, her massive wallet with a huge coin pouch, and her brick sized leather key case. This was fortunate as we never had to have the “car conversation” with her. The issue became self-regulated because she could never find her car keys – having repeatedly thrown out her keyless entry car fob, pondering “What could this be???”. After the third lock replacement, her and her car were officially on the “outs”.

Here’s the thing: I am in a fight with our car right now, too.

Whereas my mom’s car was a Delorian, mine is more like Knightrider’s KITT (or I secretly suspect, KITT’s evil twin, KARR). Our car is basically a computer on wheels. This is a problem, because I don’t get on that well with computers. Our latest quarrel started because she was giving me the silent treatment.[1] We get into the car with our phones. Not infrequently the car refuses to acknowledge my phone. I think maybe she has her back(/frunk) up because she knows I don't fully appreciate her technological virtues. She’s not wrong. But she shouldn’t take it so personally. I feel the same way about all of M’s robot friends: the creepy, eavesdropping Siri/Alexa/Google who interject unsolicited “help”; “Newfy” the vacuum bot that repeatedly bounces off my ankles while collecting approximately 1 tablespoon of dust; the Map app set to deliver alerts in not-remotely-funny Terminator voiced jokes.[2] But to be fair, I can see our car’s perspective. If we went to couples therapy (which we might have to do), it would immediately become evident that I wasn’t “nurturing” our relationship. M will fine tune the settings and “feed” the algorithms, he’ll program parameters and tweak preferences. I will do none of those things. 

As a result, the car and I don't communicate well and are now quarreling. It started with her refusing to unlock the doors for me. After various attempts to talk to her through the car app (our couples’ mediator), I finally gave up and used the valet key. I am now driving in Interloper-mode. This would have been fine except that, despite starting out with more than enough power to get to my destination, her calculations were about 25% off the mark. Perhaps embarrassed by her computational failings, she stayed silent on this until I had travelled past the last viable exit strategy. She then pops into “helpful” mode to say: “you have insufficient power to get to any known charging options”.[3] This is EV car-speak for “Hey Loser, you’re totally screwed”. Halfway through my reactionary “What the actual -?”, my phone rings. Its M. With no preamble he asks, “what’s going on?”. Nothing like a robot girlfriend that calls your spouse to tell him of a problem before she tells you.

So, yeah, we’re not talking right now.

The car and me that is.

M and I are golden, he’s used to my technological challenges. He’s been dealing with it for decades.

My ineptitude is not confined to computers. It extends to pretty much any device. I tried vainly to remain in the pre-gadget era. I resisted getting a smart phone almost to the point where the girls had one before I did. I liked my Nokia flip phone, which mostly just lived in the glove compartment – uselessly since, like my mother’s iPhone now, it was almost never charged. I was forced into twenty first century phone ownership for emergency contact purposes. When I first got it (and since) I mainly used it to play solitaire while waiting in parking lots; send texts (mostly to myself); and to google IMDB facts. I never used it as an actual phone. This lack of engagement meant that I wasn’t attuned to new-fangled features - like FaceTime video.

Mini Fiasco Story: C, in grade 5, is going to the youth dance at the community centre. She has invited members of her hockey team. The Dad of one of the teammates, our head coach, calls me to talk about the logistics. The landline rings multiple times, but I am in the bath, so I am ignoring it (also I wouldn’t pick it up if I was standing right next to it). Then my cell rings - which I have with me (because, solitaire addiction). I figure it’s one of the girls and answer. [A reminder: I am in the bathtub. Dressed as one usually is when in the bathtub. As in, not at all.] 

Coach: “Oops, I think I VIDEO called you….” 

Say what? I am trying to process what “video call” even means. Then, I am calculating the duration and screen orientation of the phone’s path from me pressing “accept” to it reaching my ear. THEN I am trying to figure out how to end the call without removing the video screen from my cheek…lest it flash an image of my OTHER cheeks. I manage to hang up. Mortified I don’t know whether to accept his later calls. Do I say something? Do I pretend whatever he may/may not of have seen was just a figment of his dirty mind? I opt to pretend that my phone ran out of power and basically run and hide from it. When the daughter gets dropped off for the dance, it’s the mom who comes to the door. Coach-dad is in the car resolutely facing forward. Mom, “Dirty Dancing” style, wants to be sure that the dance will be “clean”. She tells me that she warned her daughter to dance no closer than a foot away from any boy, to … and I quote …. “Leave room for Jesus”. At this point, I am thinking that the only way I will know exactly which cheek I flashed the coach would be to eavesdrop on his next confession. That dad was our coach for the next five years.

To be fair, it’s not so much that I am incapable of mastering this tech stuff. Its more that I am wilfully incompetent. Because I ‘have a guy for that’. I live with a personal technology concierge. It’s much faster to walk to the next room (as I just did ten seconds ago) and ask, “How do I brighten my screen?”, than to learn for myself the difference between F2 and F6 (which look the same to me). M has been my IT department for over thirty years. This assignment was inevitable. He was the person with the first laptop, the first on the internet, the first building software, the first building software companies. So, of course, if you lost your document ten seconds before the deadline or couldn’t get the printer to work – he was The Guy. Now, I know what you are thinking: “Poor M”. You are not wrong. He has spent approximately one trillion-zillion hours helping our parents retrieve forgotten passwords alone. But to be fair, he kinda asks for it. Case in point: on my last birthday, M asked Chat GPT to compose a birthday song for me. ChatGPT (in sexy girl faux-brit voice) then regaled me with a poem about how wonderful and accomplished I was. It was very moving and heartfelt…for, you know, an AI. The poem WAS pretty good, but I drew the line when M decided to make it a teachable moment for ChatGPT and started to give it feedback. You have to draw the line somewhere, right?

I am sticking to my (ball & hammer) guns as the tech neophyte. It has worked for me this far. If, as the world continues to evolve apace,[4] I get left too far behind, I figure I will move in with the Amish or get a job at Upper Canada Village. I may be the “weak link” in M’s firewall, but I can totally be the go-to person for forging square nails or foraging for mushrooms in post AI apocalypse.  

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[1] Yes - our car has a name. And yes, she is female. And, absolutely, yes, she is M’s robot girlfriend.

[2] Well, not funny to me. VERY funny to M who relishes my annoyance at every red-light camera.

[3] For the record, I would have made it home. Barely. But in this battle of wills, I would have been victorious. Just saying.   

[4] The fact that I am a person who uses words like “apace” pretty much says it all about my place in the modernization timeline.