My dad, the old engineer nearing ninety, war vet and the head of the Church of the Whirling Electron, lies in bed, life slipping away like the river before a rain. We on the more persistent and impatient side of life wish he would jump up, do his calisthenics, ran around the room, engage with the living like us at a moment’s notice.
That won’t happen. Still, there are many opportunities to see what’s ahead by looking back. I informed him that the outhouse at the cabin, with initials carved into the walls that date back to 1913, still persists and puts a shoulder into the vagaries of weather. He and my mother have lived there for years, a place he has known his whole life. Due to a fall, a knock on the head and a cracked neck the two didn’t hop in the boat for the journey across the lake to settle in for the season. Oddly enough, the outhouse for our family is one of the survivors in this fast changing world, a stop in time that defies what he has long said is technology gone mad, the “self eating watermelon” as he put it in his writings.
He is pleased to hear that the outhouse survives and still thrives for future generations. He may never visit it again.
Perhaps one of the few things, maybe the only thing that will resist the incessant advance of things masquerading as needs rather than wants is death. Yes, technology will slow but not stop the final stop for all of us. Dad goes through his physical therapy with tolerance at best but his drive to expose the loss of human intuition to needless convenience does not waver.
Perhaps I’m actually writing these words to myself as I watch him take another snooze. We come from two different generations yet share the basic idea that Luddites both understand technology, can understand its applications in certain circumstances, yet still defy its merciless advance upon the human soul. I apply the same notion to the politics and marketing by people like Ted Cruz, he of the shiny hair and hollow rhetoric, who appear to harken back to a simpler era of governance at the same time they are the lap dogs to the dogs of war of industry and technology, lackeys of things ever more complicated, obtuse and removed from face to face human interaction. We are a people as swayed by the selling of myths and fables as were the people of the Dark Ages. This kind of populism is a ruse no different than are the purveyors of endless convenience as the salvation to the human soul.
At some point we all become slaves of those things arguably meant to free us.
In his book “Running with the Lemmings” my dad explains…
“This is a disrespectful examination of the subtle and ominous potential impact of technology and marketing by a graduate of an engineering school (U of Minnesota, Class of ’49) who spent most of his working career marketing that changing technology. The continuing ‘wildfire’ spread of computer and electronic technology significantly interfaces in our daily life and as a result has the potential to overwhelm, subvert and dim our innate and inherent human capabilities. Possibly, at some future point, humanity’s only course would be to react as the fable of the Lemming suggests.”
I thought of this as I slowed at a corner on a recent walk to watch a slight piece of slapstick unfold. A younger woman across the street was walking along absorbed in the goings on with her iPhone, her fingers dancing on the small screen, her connection to that world more relevant apparently than an approaching car. The man in the car, in the meantime, was also absorbed by a visit on the phone as he was readying for a turn. My mind in its inherent ability to size things up spatially could see that the two could very possibly intersect at some point. Most of the time as I wander through life I keep to myself. But as a youth I had a habit of jumping up and shouting “lookout!” during movies like “Blackbeard the Pirate” as a cur with a club snuck up behind a peg-legged sailor on watch for trouble.
I yelled, hey! Car!
The woman looked up. The car turned. Both were seemingly incognito. I smiled and shook my head. As I continued on I assumed that fairly soon cell phones, like bumpers that beep when an object comes into some electronic force field, will be outfitted with that safety feature. Maybe they already do, I don’t know. Somewhere in the book he hopefully mentions that the excess traffic we create, congested, overcrowded highways and brains overcrowded by multi-tasking, may even lead to a return to a more pragmatic level of technology as human intuition pushes back to contemplate the situation.
Perhaps. Just perhaps we will persevere in our humanity and reason will be found and catastrophe avoided. People of all ages will stand up and hurl the oppressive nature of technology aside, cell phones will fly out of car windows and repressive notions of freedom through the computer will be cast aside.
“The computer now controls the field of communication and the technical wizards have found a fertile playground,” dad writes. “Obviously the belief is the world will benefit by artificially bringing us together as we move farther apart. The telephone has moved from the antiquated system where a ring would summon the operator who would ask you who you wished to speak with, an outmoded but personal method. The operator would then plug in your connection for your conversation. But it was so inefficient that if you wanted to talk to Oscar at the hardware store the operator would tell you the call could not be completed—because she knew Oscar was at the coffee shop and would be back at the store in about 10 minutes.”   
I told dad I will head to the outhouse for further contemplation for our family and humanity. I will run my fingers along the century of initials spanning six generations now.