Our day-to-day lives are getting increasingly more complex.  When I was younger I spent much of my time reading science fiction novels from folks like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke that outlined a future where technology relieved the burdens of the average man.  The prediction was that the technology produced by man would someday perform a big part of the drudge work each of us are hindered by thus leaving us the freedom to be more productive and with more leisure time.   Now that some time has passed, I realize that the technology that surrounds us is having exactly the opposite effect.  Instead of actually making our lives more simple the technology around us is making life more difficult and the burden of trying to cope with technology is leaving each of us with even less free time than we had before it came into our lives.

The reason for this is that we are a society that is frankly too stupid to use the stuff that is supposed to make life easier for us.  If you were offended by this statement and replied with “no way, not me,” I would like to suggest that perhaps you are in denial.  Want proof?  Then answer this question.  If you are so smart, then why is your VCR blinking 12:00?

Don’t worry you are not alone.  I have this really fancy car stereo that has all kinds of automatic features.  The system analyzes the various sounds that are being generated by the music, accounts for differences in the velocities of the separate frequencies and automatically adds in varying degrees of delay so that theroetically, all of the sounds hit my ears at the same time.  I have no idea if this really works but I can say that it looks really cool in my dash.  It will even sense the engine speed and automatically adjust the volume to compensate for road noise.  This all sounds pretty nifty but each and every passenger who has ridden with me has to a person noticed not the quality of the sound or all the neat flashing lights but rather the fact that the clock is an hour off because I lost the manual and am too stupid to figure out how to change it.  It has been this way since I moved to Atlanta over six months ago.  The radio still thinks it is in central time not realizing the rest of the vehicle and the driver are in the eastern time zone.  Fortunately for me daylight savings time has come and now I can look really smart when in reality what I am is a patient procrastinator.

While I was growing up reading all those science fiction novels futurists were predicting that one day our society will be separated into those that have access to the latest technology and those that don’t.  I decided that by no means would I be one of the have-nots.  Now that I am living in the future so wonderfully described in the tales of my youth at times I am not so sure that I made the right decision.

The level of complexity in our lives has become insane.  Look around you right now and I will bet that you can come up with at least a half dozen devices in your immediate vicinity that, while you take for granted and probably couldn’t live without, you have not clue how they really work.  When I was 16 my father and I could work on my old Chevelle in the front yard, which was fortunate because it required almost daily coaxing in order to keep it on the road.  The pickup I have now has more computing power than the capsule that was sent to the moon and I have no clue how most of the systems function so I am now limited to oil changes and minor tune-ups.  I suspect that soon the automobile manufactures will find a way to make these more convoluted and therefore eliminate my ability to perform these functions without the assistance of that nice young man at the dealership. 

When I was a teenager I had an old black and white television in my bedroom.  It was easy to operate, just turn the knob to one of the four channels that were available and make some adjustments to the horizontal hold from time to time and you were receiving quality entertainment.  Now thanks to cable and satellite there are a whole host of channel choices available requiring you nightly to muddle through a channel guide the size of a metropolitan yellow pages in order to figure out what to watch.  The shear intricacy of the decision of selecting what to watch leaves me wanting to just forget it and turn the thing off.  And the technology hasn’t gotten any better either, just more complex.  My current television has a whole multitude of supposedly wonderful features, most of which I am completely clueless about and will never use.  Though I must admit that watching the Simpson’s with the audio set to Spanish does have it’s own twisted sort of entertainment value.

Fifteen years ago I used to be a real wiz with computers.  There wasn’t really that much complexity in the technology, especially the software because there really wasn’t that much available at that time.   Folks would bring me almost any question and I could solve it, I was a minor deity to my close circle of friends.  About five years ago that all stopped.  Now like medicine or the practice of law computing has rolled off into so many specialty fields that no one human being could even begin to comprehend it all. Not that I didn’t try to keep up on every facet of the technology around me, I read, I studied, I attended seminars galore, but I was quickly falling behind and my head was beginning to hurt.

It was then that I realized that my grandfather had the answer.  My grandparents are technology have-nots.  They don’t own a computer, their stereo system still has an 8 track in it and up until a few years ago they saw little reason to have a microwave oven in the kitchen.  I used to think that they were living in the Stone Age and missing out on all the wonders that technology could provide.  Now I realize that they had the right idea all along.  Whenever I visit my grandparents, Papaw is sitting in the back yard cracking pecans with his dog next to him, or working in the garden, or perhaps tinkering in his shop on some woodworking project.  Next to his easy chair is a stack of magazines like Life, Popular Mechanics, and Woodworking.  I experienced an epiphany when I finally realized that since he didn’t have to clutter his life with the complexities of technology he actually had more free time to enjoy life.  Since he didn’t spend his days and nights reading manuals and documentation the size of War and Peace he actually had time to read magazines and even real literature!  Suddenly I realized that it was the have-nots that were the better half of our society and I belonged to the section of society that had been disenfranchised from having a life.

Thus, my resolution for the millennium is to spend a lot less time focusing on technology.  I plan to leave the work at work and spend more time during my weekends throwing a Frisbee for my dog, reading a good book while lounging in my hammock, planting some flowers, and taking walks in the park with my wife. 

The bottom line here is that we need to be aware that society as a whole is in a conspiracy against intelligence.  As we continue to advance technologically, we will continue to get more stupid or at the very least we will feel less intelligent.   Perhaps it is a good life lesson for us all to be a little less smug about ourselves than our forefathers were.  Myself, the older I get the more and more I consider becoming a Luddite full time.  Like I said before, I think my grandfather has had it right all along.  Funny how our elders seem so much wiser once we get a bit older isn’t it?