So Many Choices, So Little Time
“Opportunity,” my father once warned me, “is the enemy of commitment.” At the time, we were talking about my checkered social life. Today, that warning seems more descriptive of my relationship with technology.
I have recently gotten a Sharp Wizard 128k electronic organizer. Important phone numbers, my calendar, birthday reminders, my IRS tax deadlines, business cards, notes for column ideas and memos to myself have been relentlessly digitized. Learning to use it was less annoying than I thought. I can skip, scan, edit and alter my schedule and notes with a flexibility that makes paper seem as versatile as the stone cuneiform tablets used by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.
Normally, I loathe gadgets. I loathe their hideous, user-contemptible designs and I despise their crudely written documentation. (Indeed, the instruction manual for my Wizard is bigger than the machine itself.) I dislike the gimmicky quality that shrieks “Buy me because I’m new and hot and will be in the Sharper Image catalogue!”
But I’m troubled. Just at the moment I got the Sharp, I had the chance to play with an Apple PowerBook, the Macintosh-compatible thigh-top computer that is as nifty a piece of engineering as I have seen in a decade of covering the personal computer industry. The high-resolution display is delightful, and the keyboard actually seems to have been designed with humans and not chimpanzees in mind. The portable PowerBook could not only handle my Wizard data but could easily handle all the documents I have to create and my electronic mail correspondence.
At this new moment of revelation, my technology troubles percolated. If I also got a PowerBook, should the Wizard be tossed? Or were these tools really complementary rather than competitive? Perhaps they were like Darwin’s finches and would each evolve into a niche that would make me happy and feel that my money was well spent.
But then I thought about how I really like to work and wondered if, perhaps, I should also consider the NCR, Momenta or Slate “pen-top” computers. These are the machines that let you actually handwrite notes directly into the machine. Instead of constantly typing and exacerbating my chances of getting the dreaded repetitive stress syndrome, I could go back to jotting notes by hand, and then have them reappear on screen as beautifully rendered type fonts. I could have the best of both worlds: the fluency of handwriting and the functional aesthetics of word processing. Would I be cheating on my Sharp?
Techno-ecologies always evolve to higher orders of complexity. If I did get a PowerBook or Momenta, wouldn’t it also make sense for me to acquire a cellular phone with a modem so that I would be able to download/upload my E-mail and documents no matter where I was? I could even send and receive faxes. A cellular phone would also let me just chat when I was in the mood.
But if I got a phone, should I also get call waiting? What about a portable answering machine? Perhaps I should multiplex my computer/phone so that messages--or faxes or E-mail--would flash on-screen when I was working so that I was always connected.
But then I remembered that I hate looking down at a screen for information sustenance. It’s so confining and it hurts my back. It turns out that Reflection Technology, a Massachusetts-based start-up, makes a product called “PrivateEye.”
Just put on their goggles and, no matter which way you turn your head, you can see a beautiful screen image floating 18 to 20 inches away from your eyes. It’s like a low-budget virtual reality environment. (No wonder Nintendo and other video game companies are interested in it.) What’s more, it’s private. No one else can see what you’re working on or looking at. That also appeals to me.
Somewhere along this spiral of reasoning, I confronted an irritating truth: For my life to work, I am now going to have to spend as much time managing my relationships with technology as I do with human beings. Increasingly, my quality of life is defined not by the objects I own (which would make me a classic yuppie) but by the levels of convenience that they create.
My initial happiness with my Sharp Wizard is less a symbol of flagrant yuppie nerdiness than my pathetic quest for something--anything--that will make managing the mundane logistics of my life even fractionally easier. Opportunity truly is the enemy of commitment. Gadgets that absorb the complexities of my life are good. Gadgets that create complexity for me are bad. Gadgets with an unknown CQ (complexity quotient) are shoved into quarantine to be re-examined at a later date--a date programmed into my Sharp Wizard.
Marshall McLuhan was right. Our tools aren’t something that are separate or distinct from who we are; they are really an extension of ourselves. (No mail from Freudians, please.) Sure, some people manage to turn their tools into shackles, but then a lot of people manage to turn their human relationships into shackles too. I don’t know which of these technologies merit my commitment; I do know that I like having the opportunity.
