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Under the Sun Cynthia Oi |
New and improved?
Leave me with the oldNEARLY every week the cable people call up, urging me to give up my analog television service. They try to bribe me with freebies -- free installation, free service for so many months, free this, that and the other -- but I say no politely, unless they've rung up while I'm watching one of the only two non-news shows I enjoy.
They attempt to seduce me by touting that the digital service will open novel worlds of television viewing, that I'll have more choices in the hundreds of channels offered and more functions, like being able to split the screen on my ancient Sony to see multiple aspects of a particular show. They promise everything will be new and improved, not knowing that those words fill me with dread, especially after seeing the monster 200-button remote jobbie that would replace the cute little one I now use.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it appears I've slipped into the orbit of old fut-ism, where the latest gadget or service or pop culture trend either puzzles or irritates me.
I'm afraid that someday the trusty Toyota will give up the ghost and I'll have to buy a new car. My auto ignorance is already so profound that if combined with my skimpy understanding of computers, I'll never be able to figure out what a car sales associate may be telling me.
I'm not exaggerating. Cars are no longer straightforward machines with engines and gears and drive shafts. (They have those, don't they?) All are attended by computers with high-tech doodads that control everything from fuel gauges to safety devices and monitor everything from loose gas caps to CD sound output.
Driving a rental recently, I discovered that some chip automatically locks the doors after the engine has been running for a few minutes, something my brother-in-law learned the hard way when he popped out to drop off a load of trash at the landfill and found himself unable to get back in. At least the car was fuel efficient; it was still running when he returned hours later with another key.
Old fut-ism manifests also in my view of current fashion, particularly the rage for what I call "duck" pants for their tendency to display anatomical quacks.
Teenage males cling to the trend of loose trousers that wallow around their hips and drag on the ground. I saw a kid dip-walking through a mall with a Snickers wrapper caught at the bottom of his pants leg. Why he thought he looked cool trailing trash I don't know. For females, the low-rider vogue is different in that the pants are tight, creating a problem with overexposure that magazines and newspaper style sections offer advice about how to bend without undesired revelations.
I'm creeped out by a new online service that sends e-mails to be delivered after you die. You write and address them, the service stores them -- encrypted, they say, no pun intended -- then releases them after you've gone to the great beyond. Subscribers can print out a paper document (how low-tech) that will inform survivors the e-mails exist and will be forwarded upon confirmation of death. Or the messages can be "auto-released," triggered if you don't log on for awhile, which the service will interpret to mean you're dead. That you may have forgotten that you even subscribed, no longer have a computer or Internet provider, or have a macabre sense of humor doesn't figure in, I guess. Whatever the case, in the grip of old fut-ism, the idea roils me.
I'm technically still in middle age, but should I make it to 70-something I'll probably be in full old-fut mode when the TV company comes to wrestle away my analog cable box. Until then, I'll watch reruns of "Friends" and "West Wing," channel-surfing with my 28-button remote, half of which I've never touched.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.
