#967 Textual Technology

I’m getting a little tired of technology inserting its presence into my life. I’m not talking about the sound of a chainsaw in the distance or the neighbor’s TV blaring down the street. I’m talking about communications directly from technology. Textual Technology.
In some ways it makes the world a better place for the hearing impaired. You can’t go anywhere these days without closed caption TVs silently announcing the news and sports. Even traffic lights are displaying complicated messages and countdown clocks.
But I don’t like communications from my stupid microwave. Like when it flashes a string of text after I warm something up in it. A little digital readout scrolls across the control panel just after the microwave dings. It says “Enjoy Your Meal.” But because communication depends on context as well, if I’m just having a cup of coffee it really makes me feel like a loser. Like the microwave is being snide or something.
The subtext of what it’s saying seems to be, “Thanks for putting my radar wave maker to such heavy use just so you could have a tepid cup of coffee, loser. Enjoy Your Meal.”
Or the other day I got an email from a friend of mine. He had sent it on his new Blackberry. So the Blackberry had to tell me so. The email said at the bottom, “Sent from my Blackberry Smartphone.” How pretentious, I thought. I teased my friend about it and he said he didn’t include the line, it must have been added automatically. How pretentious and presumptuous, I thought. And way to work in some free advertising.
Blackberries and Twitter and texting are all getting so out of hand. Witness all those members of congress twittering like schoolgirls during Obama’s Non-State of the Union address.
And young people. I swear. They never seem to look up and look people in the eye anymore. Ipod earbuds in their ears cutting them off, slider phones open, texting away.
Pretty soon, I expect they’ll start every morning in home room going: I text allegiance to the flag of the United States of...
America, ya gotta love it.