When I hear the term high tech it makes me start wondering what the opposite of that really is.  So, would that be low tech?  How about no tech?  I know, we could call it vintage technology?  Nah, that won't work - might throw all the high tech people into apoplexy.  They'd never understand a term like vintage technology because to them the old ways are the wrong ways never to be revisited.  It's all about high tech, baby, and we live in the age of gadgets, many of them electronic.  I would say that we've become so technologically advanced that a whole new subculture has grown up in this country called technophiliacs, but that would just date me back to the dark ages.  The truth is that I'm now part of the subculture . . . one of those still resisting the technology revolution.  I guess that makes me a technophobe.

I was all set to vote for Clinton for president, and then I saw a picture of her in Time (or somewhere) fiddlle/fating with her blackberry.  Long ago I took a dislike to technocrats, those people in politics and government with a mindset that technology could fix most of our social and governmental problems.  I don't think Clinton is like that, but just seeing her holding that blackberry gave me the feeling one gets pulling paper through your teeth.  One side of me says technocrats may be right, that we can fix most things with advanced technology, but another side, and perhaps the more spiritual side of me, says it's all bullshit.  The fix for our problems, whatever it is, should be more people driven that gadget controlled.

My first encounter with a techie gadget came many years ago when banks installed those ready cash machines.  I thought it was great!  You just drove up, stuck your credit card in a slot, and punched in a pin number or something.  And I did that . . . and it ate my card.  Yeah, just sucked it right up - the only credit card I had.  So I punched the button to speak to someone, and got a canned recording telling me there was a problem with my card.  "The problem is," I said in a rather calm voice, "your machine ate my card."  I punched buttons, wiggled things, but got nothing.  Finally, I ended up outside my car, pounding on the machine and screaming, "You ate my card, you sonofabitch.  Gimme back my card!"  A nice lady from inside the bank came out and ask me to come inside, that they'd give me back the card.  I'd punched in the wrong number - three times.

That was my first hint that I'm a techie retard.  I'm not a gadget person.  In fact, I despise most gadgets and long for devices that are simple to run.  I'm a prisoner in my own car.  I walk up to it and press a little button in my hand, and it lights up and starts adjusting the seats so I can get my fat ass inside it.  It's all digital on the inside, which is fine at night but the shits on a bright day.  Old farts can't read digits like young people with good eyes.  I hate digits, partly because they're part of the technological revolution.  Anyway, my car locks me in as soon as I put it in gear, and then it starts telling me all about its condition - lights come on here and there telling me what to do.  I feel like I've been cornered by somone wanting to tell me all about their medical condition. 

And then if I take it to the shop, it has to be run through diagnostics.  What?  Diagnostics?  Yeah, they say - that's the machines they plug it up to, the computers that tell them what's wrong with it.  Then I get the bill - two hundred bucks for new brakes, two hundred for labor, and three hundred for diagnostics.  This diagnostics thing, the mechanic of the here and now, is more expensive than the old time human mechanic.  I start to envision the mechanic of the future, a machine that meets me at the door of the garage and checks my credit cards . . . then plugs me into a machine to calm me down while they jam an enormous repair bill up my ass. 

I love my kids and grandkids, but I hate their techie toys . . . like those infernal cell phones that beep and chirp and make all kinds of sickie noises.  And I have to go riding in a car with them, the same one that holds me hostage most of the time, and listen to those gadgets they play with chirp and chime and ding and dong . . . and before long old grandpa has developed a bad case of the redass.  Finally, my grandson starts checking his website and text messaging his friends, and I finally say, "Look kid, if you don't put that infernal gadget up you'll be wearing it as a permanent part of your anatomy."  He's over six feet tall now, strong as a bull, so he just giggles and says, "Aw, Papa." 

I'm a hater of high tech devices, but I've at least got a handle on it now.  I've figured out that high tech really means low intelligence.  They are devices for folks who're not smart enough to get along with a regular phone, a regular car, a real mechanic, a tape player, or anything that is vintage technology.  They have to have gadget that do it all for them . . . and they'll learn how to operate these things for the sake of convenience.  We don't want to be bothered with having to really do something; we want it to do those things for us.  And so we get gadgets.

Vintage technology was the high tech of just a few years ago when it comes to electronics.  We're not talking about many generations here, but just a few year - certainly no more than twenty years.  And no device known to man is more symbolic of that than the camera.  Now we have the digital camera, the wonder of the new age photographers.  I own one and like it, but I also own about 300 vintage cameras, and in their day, they were the most technologically advanced thing going.  I don't want to stick a tag on all digital camera users, but all the advanced technologies in cameras are for camera dumbasses.  What we're talking about here is an entire new generation of photographers who know a lot about photography but little or nothing about cameras themselves.  They don't have to know cameras because the camera knows almost everything that's needed to make great photographs.

I'm all in favor of technological development and new high tech gadgets, even though I don't like them.  Well, I'll admit to liking some of them, but I realize that most people like them more, and I don't want to deprive society of anything that will advance it.  But there's something sad about seeing times fade into history where people were more important than the gadget.  I'm going to miss the old time mechanics when the last of them is gone. I'll miss a lot of the things that were high tech when I was still required to master it before it would do its job.  I love my old cameras because you have to figure them out, learn how to use them, and how to make pictures that come up to your expectations as a photographer.  And there are some wonderful technologies in those forty year old cameras, things to learn about and master.  I think professional photographers are still knowledgeable about cameras, but I worry for the rest of us . . . that the new technologies are turning us into a bunch of dull-witted digiheads.  

I know that cultural lag is an ever present thing in all societies - when technology slightly outruns the society's ability to catch up with it.  And society does catch up in most cases, but at what cost? I hate to sound overly pessimistic about this, but I'm afraid that this cultural lag works itself out when those of us who can't accept the new ways die off.  Advanced technology in the medical sciences have kept me alive beyond what the old ways would've allowed.  I owe my life to it . . . and I still can't accept it.

Maybe when it gets right down to it, I'm just too smart to be a digihead . . . and too dumb to be convert to the new ways.

D. Paz, 12/11/07