Technoangst : You Can’t Develop a Relationship With a Device That You’re Unable to Make Work

MY TELEPHONE RANG the other day in the late afternoon, and when I answered, a hearty male voice began:

“Hello! You have won an all-expense-paid two-week vacation for two in the Caribbean. If that interests you, please push 1 . . . . “

I hung up. It was obviously a recorded voice. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d pushed 1. I might have then heard a live voice explaining the pitch.

Of all the pitches we get, either for sales promotions or charities, the recorded approach annoys me most. If you aren’t interested, you’re weeded out without wasting the time of a live person. The only person’s time they have wasted is yours.

If I were naive enough to think that they really were offering a free vacation, I would hang up anyway. Clever as computers are, I don’t like to talk to them. I owned a telephone-answering machine for two years before one of my sons finally programmed it and hooked it up.

He asked if I wanted to tape a message for callers. I told him no, I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound silly. He taped a brief message that began, “You have reached the Smith residence . . . .” He sounded like a butler.

Soon after the machine was in operation, my wife’s sister called from Bakersfield. She got “You have reached the Smith residence.” She recognized our son’s voice and thought I must be ill. She called our son, who reassured her that I was all right, just reluctant to leave a message on my machine.

The most common message, I think, is “Hello. We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you will leave . . . .” That always makes me wonder what they’re doing that they can’t come to the phone. Taking a shower? Fighting? Making love? Most likely they are not home at all but want to make burglars think they are.

Most boring are the long, complicated, apologetic messages that deplore the necessity of such communications, or the seductive answers suggesting that a liaison is yours for the asking. Those who employ this technique are usually married, monogamous and otherwise unavailable to any kind of sexual overture. They are just titillating themselves.

This is not to say that answering machines are not useful. I sometimes come home to find four or five messages on mine, and many are from people I want to keep in touch with. There is also another, less obvious, advantage. People making sales pitches do not leave messages.

Being rather inept with electronic devices, I sometimes create problems for myself. I do not properly erase messages already played back. Consequently, the next time I play the tape, I hear the same old messages, and I can’t tell whether they are old ones or new, since almost nobody ever gives the date. This causes me to call people back and say, “You called me?” and they say, “Oh, that was the other day. You’ve already called me back.”

A recent article by Mary Corey of the Baltimore Sun reported that Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at Cal State Dominguez Hills, has found that between a quarter and half the population suffer from “technoangst.” He said that contrary to popular opinion, computerphobes are not more likely to be women, not more likely to be older and not more likely to be less intelligent.

So it is not necessarily my age or my intelligence that makes me resistant to computer technology. I may be part of “a small group (that) claims it is willfully ignorant, a symbolic gesture done to quietly protest the increasingly impersonal nature of today’s technology.”

I have yet to use an automated teller, though my wife uses them often. Maybe it’s because they don’t say “Have a nice day” after our transaction. I miss that.

Likewise, I have yet to make a phone call on my telephone credit card. For one thing, I can’t read the instructions on the card, and I forget what to do. Also, I can’t remember the code number, which is not printed on the card. That may have something to do with age. I don’t know.

As for my VCR, I almost always fail to tape a show while we’re absent from the house. Either I do something wrong or I forget to turn it on altogether. Thus we come home expecting to see a segment in a KCET series, only to draw a blank.

On occasion, though, my ineptitude can be a blessing. Sometimes, when we find the tape blank, we turn ourselves to more engaging enterprises, such as reading or talking. Those are two occupations that have almost vanished from the hearth.

I meant to tape the 1990 Super Bowl game, but blew it. Some things are better left unseen.