Keeping It Simple

By Wayne Maruna

Computers seem to be in everything these days, and that’s not necessarily good.  I walked into the new Verizon store at our mall recently to inquire about plans and phones. I ask the young lady at the desk what phones are part of the package, and she takes me to their selection display.  I tell her here’s what I want:  I want a phone.  I don’t want a camera.  I don’t need an MP3 music player.  And I sure would make little use of a GPS device – I am, after all, a man.  ("Directions?  I don't need no stinkin' directions!")  Text messaging?  I don’t think so; I need to save my thumb joint to operate my TV remote in my old age.  Forget email, and for sure forget internet access on a two square inch screen.  I just want a phone that vibrates so as not to disturb others, and then rings only if I'm too mesmerized by the vibration that I can’t comprehend its source.  It does not have to play ‘Turkey in the Straw’ or make light saber noises, and I have no intention of ever paying for a downloadable ring tone.  I can handle an on-board phone book, sure.  But I just want a phone, preferably with big display numbers.  When I left, I’m sure she was wondering what poor kid’s grandpa I was.

In fairness, I actually know a couple people who make use of each and every one of those new-fangled extended phone capabilities.  (I think I know what Mr. T. would say about this.)  So I asked my Gen-X son what possible value text messaging was.  He said it was useful in long-winded business meetings, because you could text message a colleague at the table and say ‘MAKE IT GO FASTER!’  So it’s like passing messages in the fifth grade, but without the paper, pencil, and hard evidence.

A Trip To a Remote Area

On our recent trip back to Ohio for Thanksgiving to see family and friends, we stopped at my brother-in-law’s place.  As most of Ohio was doing that day, he was glued to his television, watching the Buckeyes keep Michigan’s Wolverine claws off their championship dreams.  He was sitting in his lounger, his three remote controls at the ready.  I watched in amazement for a while, trying to figure out the purpose of this electronic trilogy.  Apparently one remote was to control the surround sound, one remote controlled the TV’s speaker volume, and one remote controlled the cable box.  Apparently brother-in-law Baggins had not yet got wind of the One Remote to Control Them All.

We moved on to my brother’s house, where we spent the week.  It’s a better place to stay because only two remotes are required to watch TV there.  Remote #1 was used to turn on the TV and control the volume, while remote #2 was used to change the channel on the satellite dish.  Since I was going to be spending six solid days there, I took the initiative to go online (it’s what I do best) and download the manual for his DirecTV box and remote, and I was able to program his TV controls onto the satellite box remote.  He still has to push device buttons to switch from satellite box to TV, but at least he no longer has to literally juggle two remotes.  I believe a true universal remote needs to be on his Christmas list.  Since he is the Prince of Procrastination, I will probably have to buy it and program it for him.

Simpler is Better

I read an article by an M.I.T. professor recently in some scholarly journal (I believe it may have been Parade Magazine) that talked about how technology has gotten to a point where designers forget that oftentimes simpler is better.  Yes, it is amazing and wonderful what some our devices can do, but just because they can do does not mean that they should do.  We are perhaps at a point where the next advance needs to be not adding more bells and whistles, but making the ‘necessary’ easier to do.  I wholeheartedly concur. And that’s coming from me, Mr. PC Gadget freak.

We have an answering machine / phone in our den, and it communicates with three other phones in the house.  In our bedroom is another electronic phone of a different brand.  It too has answering machine capabilities, which we neither want nor need.  It is constantly flashing ‘CL’ to tell me that the answering machine’s clock is not set.  It’s not set because I don’t use it, and the process to set it involves about a dozen menu steps and perhaps a secret handshake, the sum total of which no human can remember. To make matters worse, I have learned over time that this machine is somehow tied into the very fabric of our creation – it is One with the Force.  We can go weeks without a power outage.  But when I finally get fed up with that flashing CL and perform the complicated ritual to set the clock time – any time, it doesn’t have to be right – just to make the red CL go away, the machine sends out some pulse into the Force that insures that we will lose power within 24 hours, which will bring back the flashing CL because the designers saw no need for a battery backup. 

There’s a reason 120 million VCRs in our country are flashing “--:--“ as you read this.  It’s the same reason someone, somewhere is designing a cell phone which can communicate with your TIVO to reprogram its recording times, when they should be designing a VCR (or DVR, or TIVO) which can connect to an atomic clock somewhere and set its own time. I’m ready for technology to make my life easier, not more complicated.  How about you?

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Addendum:  Two months after this article was published, I made my life simpler.  I pitched the answering phone in our bedroom and replaced it with a 25 year old 'Princess' hard-wired phone that had been sitting in my closet.