Friday deep thought (Dec. 29): will a new year see technology become even more complicated?

An amusing little story I came across recently, which sounds like something that has probably happened to somebody at one time or another.

The teller relates:

"I had parked my car in a parking garage, and when I came back to it, there was this young couple nearby, early twenties, having a heated argument.

They couldn't open the door to their car. She wanted him to call a taxi, and drive to a mall and buy a new battery for their dead car door key fob, as they were sure that was the problem. But he wanted to call a locksmith to get the door open. They couldn't agree, and were getting quite angry at each other, thinking that the other's solution was going to cost more and take longer.

I asked them if I could be of assistance, and they both wanted me to explain to the other why their idea was better.

I asked to see their key fob, and the guy handed it to me.

I then walked to their car, pushed the button on the fob to extend the key manually, put the key in the lock, turned it, and opened the door.

They both stood there with mouths open, stunned, and asked "OMG, how did you do that?"

I explained to them how I did that, and showed them how to use the fob manually for that purpose. But neither of them had ever seen a car door opened manually with a key fob before.

It's not the fault of the couple in the story that they were unaware of the manual function of the key fob. The place where they bought the key obviously had never told them about it.

Of course they still may have had a problem, trying to start their car with a low-battery fob.

But as far as that goes, how many of us have struggled with, say, our keyboards at one time or another, wanting our computers to do something, but we didn't know how to get them to do it, until we finally either stumbled on to how to get them to do it, or we spent a bunch of minutes on the web searching for how to do it.

But we'll all probably be in that boat indefinitely. Technological progress just keeps speeding right along, changing almost daily, and there will always be some new thing that we just don't know about yet, or something that has been changed, that we don't know about yet, that will stop us until we learn about it or figure it out.

I suppose it's the price we pay for the ongoing, often stunning, rapid pace of improvement in the brave new world of computers.

And if we have to run a little faster this coming year, and later on, to keep up, well, that's just the way it is.

This is precisely the reason I do most of my local driving in a car that is over 25 years old. It's my pride and joy. So simple I can do most repairs myself. The limited technology reduces the number of potential problems. My mechanic tells me that I should get more than 200,000 miles from it. Currently, the odometer reads about 128,000. Mint condition. My worst nightmare would be to have someone rear end me and insurance to total it out, netting me a Blue Book of probably $1200. The older I get, the more I appreciate durable goods that were made in the 20th century. When I go, they can bury my car with me.

In many ways, electronic usage is getting simpler in a perverse way. People just have way less fundamental understanding of how things work nowadays so they have no intuitive way to figure things out. No one learns Fortran, DOS, Unix anymore and industrial arts is no longer a required part of schooling. We older folks have created a generation with mixed capabilities and their children don't have a chance but can type 100 words/minute with two thumbs. The question is does it matter in the upcoming AI world? I don't think so.

Spelling is not needed anymore since devices and search engines correct all mistakes to the point where I just quickly approximate words and pick from the list, lot faster but I also know what the right answer looks like. Of course, homophones (deer vs. dear) are a lost cause now since the young people don't know which one is correct even if it is corrected.

On to mattam's car thoughts... I have my old toolbox with a timing light, tach/dwell meter, a couple of special distributor wrenches, assorted spark plug sockets, assorted point feeler gauges and file, impact driver, and so on that are safely stored in a cabinet. I remember those days well. However, the only thing I do on cars anymore is replace filters, wiper blades, and wash occasionally.

Things I do not miss - 3000 mil oil changes, carburetors, distributor caps, tune-ups, wheel alignments and almost anything else happening less than 100K miles since tires and brakes about the only thing to address under 100K miles and they last a lot longer than they used to. There is also recall stuff once in a while. There were no recalls back in the 1970's except you could not buy a Corvair anymore. The old cars were mechanical nightmares for the most part which is why we had to learn to work on them.

So while I appreciate where we finally have got with all this stuff, most modern music is terrible, even on a good system. The fact that it can be digitally edited to proper tuning and tempo still does not make it good. That part of the past I am still living in.

Post Edited (Mumbo) : 12/29/2023 1:13:33 PM (GMT-8)

GoBucks said...
VinceInMT said: That said, my workhorse for programming, which is also my in house webserver, is a computer I built from parts 17 years ago and it's running XP.

You need any floppy discs?

Ha ha. I have plenty of 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 ones around. In fact, across the room from me is a Windows 98 machine I keep around just so I can read those should the case arise and, on occasion, it does.

I get calls from others who say "Hey, can you read a _____" and my answer is usually "Probably."

This also goes for other magnetic recordings. I can handle 8-track cartridges and their cousin 4-tracks, an assortment of reel-to-reel formats (all 1/4") both capstans and rim drives, cassettes, and wire. Yes, wire. I have a nice, functional late-30s Webster Chicago Model 80 wire recorder, with some spools of wire. Of course I can play all the usual vinyl suspects as well. No, I can't play wax cylinders but I have one or two.

The word gets around (it's a small city) that I can do this stuff so I end up doing the occasional "found sounds" projects when people discover dad's, or grandad's, old recordings and need them digitized. I have a couple web sites that are, among other things, sort of devoted to this stuff which you can find here:

www.codecooker.com

and here:

www.otrannex.com

technology always becomes more complicated to the old fart that refuses to embrace it