By Bertie Brouhard
Craving a burger after a recent trip abroad I recently made a beeline for In-N-Out on Olive Drive. Dining in savoring my Double-Double with cheese, fries and chocolate shake (consistently delicious) I was struck by how very quiet my surroundings were. It was busy. I suspect a normal lunch hour. A dozen or so white clad employees crowned by chef overseas caps and secured by large safety pins holding tight their aprons were slicing, dicing, frying, serving. Filling orders. The drive-thru was backed up, the inside big bench occupied by customers waiting to pick up their meals, and the indoor and outdoor dining areas crowded with tradesmen, high school and college kids and a couple old townies like me. The few conversations (albeit brief) were those of other old schoolers needing to voice their orders at the walkup counter, the server calling out numbers for pickup and those I suppose shouting theirs from their vehicles into the drive-thru box.
Other than one older couple rambling in Spanish I didn’t see or hear one ongoing verbal conversation amongst the several dozen inside dining customers or the dozen or so fast moving employees. The employees were not on their phones but all the customers; burger, fries or drink in one hand had their cell phones in their other. The singles, doubles, threesomes and foursomes all we glued to theirs.
How sad! I for one miss good conversations. This “beast” (mine and your mobile, cellular phone) needs some usage guidelines, etiquette training perhaps; maybe a day or two weekly of rest (turned “off’.) The scene while munching my lunch got me thinking about my tech journey and our phones’ overblown importance and unbridled use.
But don’t misconstrue my meaning. I use often as best I can my aging iPhone 12 with its degraded battery and excessive, too plentiful, many unappreciated, unused apps. Having a tool doing so many wonderful tasks, the size of a deck of playing cards in your purse or pocket, connecting you to the world is heady stuff.
I smile knowing the new foldable, “iPhone 18” is half the $2800 price of my first new car (i.e. a yellow ‘68 Chevy Camaro.) I”ll wait to upgrade. My worn 12 like yours calls, texts, emails, scours the web, plays music, takes my heart rate, measures, has a clock, timer, stop watch, calculates, knows the weather forecast. Now with AI for endless questioning it also knows its location, others and mine.. Google Maps is my fav. I ask Siri baseball questions while watching the playoffs. And needing to know how to fix, repair, operate anything I have yet to stump YouTube. Only my forefinger moves to do much of my shopping. And banking, concert tickets, museum tours and a humbling game of chess are but an app away. Surely I’m missing many of your go-tos.
Well into her nineties I asked years ago our friend, Jean, “What was the greatest invention of your lifetime?” She unhesitatingly told me “The pill. It freed half the world’s population.”
I suggest “the internet” would be my reply. And when they take the training wheels off “Artificial Intelligence” it’s probably the next big thing.Then what for your “phone?”
I’m amused looking back with other OGs at the state of technology in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. Our family, city dwellers, didn’t have a party line but our rural Iowa relatives did. And it was surprising when I heard Aunt Stella tell farm neighbor Martha “I need the line.”
Our television signal, greatly affected by the Nebraska plains weather, traveled 100 miles of airwaves from Lincoln; first in black and white for “Howdy Doody” and amazingly later in color for Walt Disney and “Bonanza.” About that time I’d go with my mom to Wolbach’s Department Store. Looking up at the ceiling I was fascinated by the network of clear, pneumatic tubing which ran from each customer service counter to the upstairs office. The metal capsules raced around the store carrying customers cash or personal checks. Indeed, I’m older than the first credit card.
I’ve not had any telecommunications device as exciting as my first transistor radio. And when eight track cassettes for a car’s “stereo” arrived what could be finer? My high school days were mostly print media (“Boys Life, Mad Magazine, SI” and earlier a “Weekly Reader.”)
Off to college I prized my new Smith-Corona blue portable typewriter and Pickett 24 table slide rule. I graduated and started working for a major hvac manufacturer before I heard the word “computer” and something called “data processing.” Since 1970 or so our world hasn’t been the same. Better or worse is for you to say.
It seems a short time; not far or long from when I was sending out postcards to my dealer customers spread across central Ohio; Lima to Springfield to Portsmouth to Zanesville to Akron to Mansfield informing them of my proposed sales call to the year (2001)when I hung up my briefcase and retired. During my early sales years I needed pay phones. Armed with a phone credit card a bookkeeper at HQs scrutinized the bill attached to my paper expense account. At a district sales meeting we Territory Managers were given “pagers” and the boss expected a return call within 30 minutes of his number appearing. I spent $150 for a four function Commodore box looking calculator trying to remain loyal to my slide rule. However a facsimile machine and my first mobile phone (i.e. a lunch box sized Motorola I flaunted at the Little League Park) put me over the moon. I could phone from anywhere and quit going to the post office for “mailings” thanks to my fax machine. No more carbon paper for triplicate copies.
Our young sons marvelled at their Atari. Soon I had early Apples with a dial up modem (Remember the sound?) connecting to a strange, foreign thing called “The World Wide Web.” Uuuf dah! It was truly the Next Big Thing.
Now long into my retirement I have little knowledge of how present day “sales” are transacted. I’m from the press the flesh, gotta go see ‘em sales generation.
Have Zoom, FaceTime, everything and everyone being online replaced the personal sales call? I suspect there are far fewer business airline tickets, auto road trips and less face to face, live, in person selling. I certainly enjoyed seeing my customers at their places of business. The travel to hopefully make a sale and later in my career to help a colleague or one of my group succeed was exciting. Maybe desktops, laptops, tablets, cell phones online have replaced those live interactions? I am a sales dinosaur! The “Quotasaurus” perhaps.
To me there’s little in life as interesting, entertaining, more attractive than a good live, in person conversation. Has it now lost its appeal? No time or desire for a chat? They seem to be on the decline. Has the cell phone given them a death sentence? Are they as outdated as a game of bridge or canasta? As yesterday as shop class and home economics? Why run the risk of being bored; wasting your time? The chance of getting immediate feedback on your silly ideas, hearing of the worsening condition of (fill in the blank with “family kerfuffle, finances, health, career,” et al) of your conversant gone out of style? Who tells a good story?
Will future cell phones replace or become humans? Could AI create you and me? Let’s take control of these machines!
“Our relationship with machines spans historical, sociological, and technological dimensions, exploring how humans interact with, control and get replaced by mechanical and digital systems.”
If interested in this centuries old concept first introduced by 18th French physician and philosopher, Julien Offray de La Mettrie in 1747 you might see his “L’Homme Machine” which extends Descarte’s argument that animals are mere automatons, or machines, to human beings. His doctrine that man is a machine has perhaps more defenders than before among physicists, biologists and philosophers; especially in the form of the thesis that man is a computer (maybe an iPhone?) Your eyes, like mine, may glaze over with such reading.
I recall years ago that a male baby born in Canton, Ohio, had a small football placed next to him in his crib (maybe a pom pom for the girls?)
Playing football for the town reigned supreme. Maybe hospital NICUs should have infant iPhones or Galaxies for their newborns?
I often practice “Amish Tuesday;” not picking up my iPhone. (And often get rather annoyed when someone needs to look at theirs.) Long ago, a young salesman, I’d driven some distance to meet a customer only to have him twice interrupted by phone calls. I boldly told him after the second, “If this is not a good time for our meeting … we can re-schedule.” He then asked his secretary to hold his calls. I may use that line again.
I think Ralph would agree. He died in 1882 but probably had a good take on our future predicament. His sound advice on walking: “Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
I suggest as an experiment in better living try leaving your phone at home when you’re next “Out For A Walk.”
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