I'll Mature When I'm Dead (6 page)

The wheel stuck to the frame because of magnetism, which was a new and much more exciting force back then. To play with your Wheel-O, you tilted the frame so the wheel rolled down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down, then up, and so on. Before you knew it, two minutes had flown by, and it was time to go outside and throw rocks.

The most technologically advanced toy I had was the Erector Set, which was a box containing hundreds of metal pieces, gears, bolts, nuts, washers, etc., along with instructions showing how to assemble these into projects such as a miniature Ferris wheel that actually rotated. This required many hours of effort, but I found that if I followed the instructions carefully, I learned something important: I could never, ever, make an object that looked anything like the miniature Ferris wheel in the instruction book. What I produced looked more like a tragic miniature building collapse. That is why I became an English major.

We have come a long way since the 1950s. Today we have technology up the wazoo,
⁹
and we use it constantly in our everyday lives. Consider, for example, my typical morning routine:

For openers, I sleep next to an alarm clock that is accurate to something like one jillionth of a second. This is because it receives wireless signals from the official U.S. atomic clock, which as its name suggests is a clock made out of atoms, making it very small and difficult to wind. Half the time the government scientists can’t even find it. (“Dang! I think I sucked the atomic clock up my nose again!”) But it’s very accurate, so when I go to bed at night and set my alarm clock for 7 A.M., I know for a fact that in the morning I will be awakened at precisely 5:43 A.M., because that is when my dog, Lucy, decides that it’s time to go out.

Lucy is also part of the high-tech revolution: She contains a tiny implanted microchip, which can identify her if she runs off, which is not an unlikely scenario given that she has the IQ of a radish. Actually, that’s not fair. If you feed and care for a radish, it will have the sense to stay with you. Whereas Lucy would leave in a heartbeat with anybody. A machete-wielding lunatic could come to our house, hack us to tiny pieces, then whistle to Lucy, and she would cheerfully follow him away, especially if he was holding her squeaky toy.

So anyway, at 5:43 A.M. sharp, according to the U.S. atomic clock, Lucy and I head out to the backyard so she can initiate the complex process of finding an acceptable place to poop. I think that while they’re implanting chips in dogs, they should implant one in the dog’s brain, assuming they can find it, that would allow you to make your dog poop by remote control. As it is, I have to wait while Lucy sniffs, one by one, every single odor molecule in our yard before settling on the exact spot where she has pooped 1,378 consecutive times.

In the old low-tech days, I would spend this idle backyard time standing around scratching myself with both hands. But now, thanks to technology, I scratch with just the one hand, while using the other one to be productive on my cell phone. With this amazing device, I can send and receive e-mail and text messages, surf the Internet, pay my bills, book flights, play games, take pictures, listen to music, watch TV shows—in short almost anything except reliably make or receive telephone calls. For some reason, cellular telephones lack that capability. It’s as if they made a washing machine that mowed your lawn and made daiquiris, but if you put your actual clothes into it, they burst into flames.

But my point is that while Lucy is inhaling her way around the yard, I am using cell-phone technology to
get things done
. I am reading e-mails offering to sell me male-enhancement products so powerful that I will need a wheelbarrow to cart my privates around. I am also reading e-mails from available women on other continents who are hoping to strike up a friendship with me that could blossom into a deeper relationship with the promise—someday—of exchanging intimate personal financial data.

I can also use my phone to go to Facebook and Twitter to read messages and “tweets” from a vast network of people I do not really know, updating me on their random neural firings on such issues as what they are eating. In the old pre-technology days, it would have been almost impossible to replicate Facebook or Twitter. The closest you could get would be to mail dozens of postcards a day to everybody you knew, each with a brief message about yourself like: “Finally got that haircut I’ve been putting off.” Or: “Just had a caramel frappuccino. Yum!”

The people receiving these postcards would have naturally assumed that you were a moron with a narcissism disorder. But today, thanks to Facebook and Twitter, you are seen as a person engaging in “social networking.” As the technology improves, we’ll reach the point when you don’t even need a phone to socially network. You’ll have some kind of device implanted in your brain so you can receive other people’s brain waves directly as they occur. You will know
everything
about them. You will know when they
fart
.

Speaking of which: When Lucy finally decides, after much deliberation and a minimum of eight full clockwise rotations of her body, to poop on exactly the same spot for the 1,379th consecutive time, we head into the house. The sun isn’t even up yet, and I have already, using handheld technology with just one hand, wasted more time than my father did in an entire day.

And I am just getting started. In the kitchen, I turn on a TV set that has hundreds of channels devoted to every conceivable subject including celebrity bunion removal.
¹⁰
I tune in to one of the literally dozens of news shows, all of which feature a format of 55 percent celebrities promoting things, 30 percent e-mails from viewers, and 15 percent YouTube videos showing bears jumping on trampolines. While I’m catching up on these developments, I turn on the programmable coffeemaker, which I hope that someday, perhaps by attending community college, I will learn to program. Then I take a breakfast “sausage” made of processed tofu from the freezer and pop it into the microwave oven, which in seconds converts it from a frozen, unappetizing gray cylinder into a piping hot unappetizing gray cylinder. It performs this culinary miracle by bombarding the frozen tofu with atomic radiation—the very same deadly force that, back in the 1950s, caused insects to mutate into savage monster killers the size of Charles Barkley, now harnessed by modern technology for peaceful breakfast purposes.

OK, that might not be 100 percent technically accurate. The truth is, I don’t really know how my microwave oven works. I also don’t know how my cell phone works, or my TV, or my computer, or my iPod, or my GPS, or my camera that puts nineteen thousand pictures inside a tiny piece of plastic, which is obviously NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE, but there it is. Basically all I know about these devices is how to turn them on, and if they stop working, I know I should turn them off and then turn them back on, because usually this makes them resume working. If it doesn’t, I know I need to buy a new device, because nobody in the entire world knows how to fix a broken one.

Don’t get me wrong: I love technology. I don’t want to go back to the days when people had to churn their own butter and make their own sausage by going out to the barn and personally slaughtering tofus. But it bothers me that I depend on so many things that operate on principles I do not remotely understand, and which might not even be real.

Take “digital” technology. At some point (I think during the Clinton administration) all media—photographs, TV, movies, music, oven thermometers, pornography, doorbells, etc.—became “digital.” If you ask a technical expert what this means, he or she will answer that the information is, quote, “broken down into ones and zeros.” Which sounds good, doesn’t it? Ones and zeros! Those are digits, all right!

But here’s the problem. Say you’re watching a TV show. Say it’s
24
, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, the angst-ridden lone-wolf federal agent who protects America from terrorism by sooner or later causing the violent death of pretty much everybody he meets. If you study this show carefully, you will notice something curious:
Jack Bauer never goes to the bathroom
. That’s why he’s so ridden with angst.

But the other curious thing you will notice is that no matter how close you get to the TV screen—even if you get one inch away and examine the picture (I have done this) with a magnifying glass, so that any given one of Jack Bauer’s nostrils is the size of the Lincoln Tunnel—
you cannot see any ones or zeros
. They’re lying to us about that.

Why is this? My theory—and bear in mind that I have won several journalism awards—is that the “experts” don’t really know how any of this technology works either. All they know is that it arrives here in boxes from China. I don’t know where the Chinese are getting it, but I do know that they’re not making it themselves. I have been to China, and if the Chinese had any grasp of technology, they would have better toilets.

So the bottom line is that we have become totally dependent in our daily lives on technology that nobody understands and that could be coming from (this is speculation) space. What if all this technology is some kind of sneak alien invasion force? What if one day all these devices rose up and attacked us? What if, for example, all the Bluetooth phone earpieces in the world suddenly sprouted drill bits and bored into people’s brains?

OK, that particular example would actually be fine. But you see my point, don’t you? If so, could you send me an e-mail or tweet explaining it?

No, seriously, my point is that technology is a blessing, but it is also a serious potential threat to humanity in general. Somebody needs to look into this. I’d do it myself, but right now I can’t. My atomic-clock alarm is going off, signaling that it’s 7 A.M., which means it’s time for me to go back to bed.

I
don’t want to toot my own horn, but I am something of a minor celebrity.

“How minor? ” you ask.

I’ll give you an example. Often, when I’m in a public place such as an airport gate area, I’ll notice that one of the other passengers keeps looking at me. Finally this person will come over, and we’ll have a conversation like the following (I have had this conversation literally dozens of times):

I’m not saying that I’m as big a celebrity as Brad Pitt, although when you look at the following side-by-side comparison of Brad and me in chart form, you’ll see that there’s not really such a huge difference:
¹¹

Over the years,
my celebrity status has provided me with certain “perks” that are not available to the public. For example, I was once a Grand Marshal in the Main Street Parade at Walt Disney World. This is a great honor, and if you ever get offered a chance to do it, you should definitely refuse. Number one, you have to wear mouse ears, so if you’re over six years old, you look like an idiot. Number two, despite the fact that you are the Grand Marshal of the parade,
you aren’t really in the parade
. At least I wasn’t.