Art for Art's Sake, Technology for Utility's Sake.

I've been thinking a lot about technology lately. It changes so fast. The moment you think you have a handle on it, it changes again and you're adapting to the new and forking over the cash for the new. By the time you reach 50 years of age, you've done a lot of adapting and a lot of forking over. I can only imagine what it must be like for my mother and father in-law who weigh in at 93 years of age and 89 years of age respectively.

At some point you begin to question the legitimacy of every new advance. Is it worth it? Do I really want to adopt one more new technology? What will it cost? Can I get by without it? Will I be ridiculed by everyone younger if I eschew the new technology? Do I really care?

When it comes to technology, my older brothers and sisters used to tell me about in the pre-RD days when they listened to their favorite radio program on Saturday mornings. I believe it featured Big John and Sparky and was titled "No School Today." The theme song was "The Teddy Bear's Picnic." They gushed over the memories of sitting around and listening to the radio.

Well, after I came along the family got a TV. I was 5 at the time. It was a black and white TV with rabbit ears on the top and that teensy little black and white screen was encased in a wooden box that was furniture for goodness sakes. Turns out the polar bear lamp on his back that held the goldfish bowl was a bad idea. The cat was fascinated by the little goldfish and the lighting coming from the polar bear underneath. The lamp, the goldfish, and the bowl were not long for this world. The TV hung around for a while. I developed a thing for Captain Kangaroo, Mighty Mouse, Roy Rogers, The Three Stooges, The Mickey Mouse Club, Zorro, and when allowed to stay up late enough, The Twilight Zone. When I was still pretty young, there was "Your Hit Parade" on Friday nights. A little later on was "American Bandstand" on Saturdays at noon. Cartoons were over by noon so that was OK. Cartoons I loved. Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Quickdraw McGraw, Yogi Bear. Hanna-Barbera had a hold on my life.

I got my first record player when I was a teenager and became the proud owner of a few 45 RPM singles and two or three 33 1/3 RPM LP's. Telephones were black things on a long cord in a centrally located area of the house and they had a rotary dial. The first telephones I remember were party lines. There were three homes on a line and each had a specific ring. Ours was 2 longs and a short. Pick up the phone to call someone and you might get Aunt Estella talking to someone about who knows what. Got a private line by 1960.

Went to college and things began to change. Everyone had stereo systems. No one listened to AM radio anymore. It was FM album rock and underground sounds. Speakers the size of Volkswagen bugs. Cassette tape systems had been invented but everyone had 8 track systems in their cars. I can still hear the "Ka-chunk" sound that it made when going from one track to another in the middle of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." Then everyone ditched the 8 tracks and got cassette players. Some people replaced their turntables with cassette players. Real audiophiles had big-assed reel to reel players that could record your garage band (Assuming you had legit microphones.). All of these sported speakers the size of Volkswagen Bugs. Don't get me started on the amps that those who saw themselves as rock stars possessed.

Life in audio land went on. Turntables, cassettes, the whole mess turned into CD's. They were smaller, easier to manage, and supposedly produced superior sound. Then real audiophiles started hyping turntables and analog as superior in sound quality to digital crap. Then came I-Pods and MP3 players and downloads and the only people to be found in the CD section of a store were over 50 years of age. "Why would you buy one of those dude?"

Telephones developed push-buttons instead of rotary dials. They became wireless, so you could walk around the house while talking. Rich people got car phones. Car phones became cell phones. Everybody got cell phones. Phones with wires coming out of your wall at home began to look pretty stupid. Everybody started getting their e-mails and text-messaging and tweeting and carrying on ad infinitum on their phones so much that they barely interacted with each other face to face at all. Oh shit! Forgot about the computers (And e-mail and assorted things that can be accessed via cell phone in addition to said computer.).

In the summer of 1969 I worked for Arkansas Social Services as a gofer. Delivered mail. Printed forms. Got a permit and drove important people around in state owned vehicles. Arkansas Social Services had in their central offices this room full of IBM computer equipment. Took up the whole room. The room was carefully climate controlled. My MacBook Air currently has the approximate capacity of the equipment in that room full of electronics. Got a job at a hospital pharmacy in the early 1970's and they had a room full of computer equipment and patient charges had to be written out in numbered codes that were subsequently entered on these punch cards that had to be fed into the computers in order to get a printout. (Same setup when I went to grad school and took Statistical Analysis for the Social Sciences.) Oh! And when I first started to college, during that misguided period where I thought I wanted to be a chemist, I functioned with a slide rule. My first calculator came along about 5 years later and was the size of small laptop. It added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided. It didn't do logarithms. My slide rule did. I didn't have to take out a loan to buy it, but I could have bought a used car with the cash it cost. Such devices currently are the size of a postcard and are given away for free by banks to new customers.

At one time I thought the greatest advance of Western Civilization was the invention of the IBM Selectric Typewriter with a correction key. Then I got an electronic word processor with a memory of about 10,000 characters. Glory be! Wonders never cease. Then there came the personal computer with a word processing program. Every job I had began to use computers and the internet and e-mail were born. I became an e-mail junkie. Typewriters? How primitive.

Cell phones got smaller and smaller. Capacities got bigger and bigger. Everyone everywhere has to be in touch with everyone everywhere else 24/7. Some people actually talk on their cell phones. Others just text and twitter and constantly check their e-mail via satellite links. Blackberrys, I-Phones, 3G, 4G. Real luxury has become the ability to get away from all this constant in touch, but then we find that we're hooked on connectivity. No Facebook for a whole day? That's just crazy talk man.

Meanwhile my TV is a big honking flat screen. The sound system, including TV, radio, CD player/DVD player, and hookup for the I-pod are all a part of a home theater system that can be heard on speakers in the ceiling throughout the house. And it gets to be a real bitch to just keep up with all the changes.

Kids these days are so wired that I sometimes suspect that they have to be plugged in and recharged every night. They all have cell phones which also serve as a download point for music and a substitute for an MP3 player if you have the ear buds to plug into them. Very few kids wear wristwatches anymore. They routinely go to their cellphones to check the time. I"m surprised someone hasn't just installed jacks in the back of their heads to plug directly into the internet. Then there is me. I was surprised as hell to find out that my DVD player and a CD player are the same friggin thing. It plays both. OK, I adapt. Now if I only had a DVR or Tivo. Know what you're thinking. "What you don't have a DVR? How can you function?"

Like I said early on, "There comes a time when you begin questioning every little advance." I finally figured out how to program my VCR and it became obsolete. Bought a blue tooth adaptor for my cell phone, so I could talk in the car when I'm driving and found out it was more trouble than it was worth. Babs got a little thing that broadcasts the I-Pod to the radio in the car and the quality was less than spectacular. Sometimes you just get by with the old. If I'm a little behind the curve electronically, cut me some slack. I was born in 1950. So far I've adapted pretty well, and my mother in law tried the internet and e-mail only to find she preferred typing letters on an electric typewriter. Sigh. Now don't get me started on electronic book readers. Sadly, this little rant has gone on for way too long. 5 Brownie points to every person who actually makes it this far without checking their cellphone messages or e-mail.