The Time Traveler

(This is something I wrote a few years back, but it is pretty timeless. If you are an adult, you have seen incredible leaps in technology and we know how that’s changed your life. But it’s good to remember what once was and how far we’ve come–– and question if life in a simpler time was perhaps better.)

I am fifty-eight-years-old, and a time traveler.

No, I didn’t invent some magical machine. I was simply born in a magical time when technology enveloped me and transported me into a strange world.

This notion struck me the other day as I was walking and reading the screen on my iPhone. I held all the knowledge of the universe in the palm of my hand and could communicate across the world in nanoseconds. I had instant access to media and could make my media–– taking pictures and videos, making recordings, and writing.

The world had shrunk, and I was the master of the planet. This thought was weird, empowering, and disturbing. How did I get here?

My first job, at age nine, was as a paperboy, a job that’s pretty much obsolete, at least for kids. Soon, printed newspapers will probably slip into oblivion. Why bother? The news is old the moment it’s committed to the page.

As a paperboy, I lugged a canvas sack loaded with newspapers across my shoulder. I walked, folded papers, and tossed them onto front porches.

Back then, almost everyone got the paper. It was essential. Delivering the newspaper was a sacred duty, and if I was late, people complained. If I missed a house, I heard about it and righted my error.

Even though I was a kid, I was an essential link between media and humanity. And for my dedicated service, I earned about ten bucks a week, with tips. I was a small businessman responsible for collecting money and paying the publisher for its products. Imagine a little kid dealing with deadbeats and hustling to find new customers.

That’s a lot of responsibility for a child. Today, most parents wouldn’t think of sending a kid out into the world without adult supervision. They’d fear that their child would encounter molesters, kidnappers, terrorists, sadists, and psychotic killers. They’re everywhere (news shows say so)!

The times they had been a-changin’.

In my youth, phones had rotary dials. We contacted each other by making our fingers go counterclockwise seven times. There were no answering machines. If you didn’t want to be disturbed, you took your phone off the hook. That’s what our family did at suppertime. Dad was a lawyer, and his clients seemed to have legal questions at suppertime that he didn’t want to hear. So, the phone went off the hook, and we ate undisturbed.

There were phone booths–– small closets containing payphones. Local calls cost a dime. Step inside, close the door, and enjoy the privacy of a telecommunication cocoon.

In seventh grade, I squeezed into a drug store phone booth with my friend Kevin, who had a crush on Mary Margaret, a cute brunette in our class at St. Patrick’s Elementary. Kevin was shy, so he had me dial the phone, instructing me that if her mother picked up, I should disguise my voice as a girl so she wouldn’t know a boy was calling. The mother answered, and in my best high-pitched girl’s voice, I asked if Mary Margaret was there. When she came to the phone, I handed it to Kevin, and he nervously talked with her, making fun of me for faking a girl’s voice. My embarrassment made the phone booth’s tight quarters feel as if they were closing in.

Kevin’s relationship with Mary Margaret never materialized, and phone booths eventually vanished.

In my youth, televisions were boxes broadcasting black and white images with washes of gray. One day, a tornado must have uprooted a house and dropped it on a witch, because when we opened the door, color TV was born.

I used to walk down the street to a small store run by an old guy named Larry Brooks, the only person I knew in Hubbard, Ohio, with color television. I went there Sunday evenings to see the dazzling opening credits of The Wonderful World of Disney. The screen projected wild, vivid colors that mesmerized me. Larry Brooks watched as I watched his TV, probably wondering if I was going to buy, or steal, something.

At the first commercial break, I’d purchase a nickel candy bar and be on my way. I was a color TV junkie, and I’d had my fix.

It was the days of transistor radios, and everyone had one, or more. They were inexpensive and stamped with “MADE IN JAPAN.” Back then, things made in Japan were considered junk. That would change.

Radio was king, and DJs had loyal followings.

In Youngstown, Ohio, our closest media market, a disc jockey named Boots Bell, held court with a velvety baritone and his signature catchphrase, “Yes indeedy, doody-daddy!” He played rock and roll records, and the Steel Valley listened with hungry, appreciative ears.

Boots was a god.

Music came on vinyl records–– round, black discs etched with musical grooves that when a diamond stylus dug into them, released recorded sounds. If an album was abused, or the stylus needle manhandled across its surface, the vinyl became scratched. Deep scratches caused skipping, an annoying interruption to the music that said: “THAT’LL TEACH YOU TO DISRESPECT ME, CLUMSY FOOL!”

Most of our family’s records had scratches; with nine children, it was inevitable. We had an innovative solution for scratched records, though–– pocket change.

We placed coins on the turntable tonearm. The added weight forced the stylus to dig deeper into the grooves and my music. It worked, but sometimes it was a losing proposition. When a record required sixty-one cents–– two quarters, two nickels, and a penny–– it was spent.

Time to discard the disc or buy another copy.

Later, music was digitized, and CDs came along with lasers mining zeroes and ones for music reproduction, which begat digital files and the miracle of the iPod, which begat–– I’m getting ahead of myself.

Today, audiophiles prefer analog vinyl to digital music, paying a premium for a record’s warm sound and superior fidelity (they probably don’t use spare change on their tonearms).

Music changed, and mathematics did, too–– or at least, how we worked with it.

In high school and college, math wizards carried plastic sticks with numbers and sliding scales called ‘slide rules,’ using the plastic divining rods for unearthing answers to complex problems.

The device was so powerful; some people carried it in a holster.

Then science invented calculators–– portable adding machines that crunched numbers instantly. Engineering students had calculators with secret scientific languages. These expensive gadgets also had holsters.

Nerds were math gunslingers, squaring off for dueling logarithms.

I was an artsy-fartsy guy who liked writing. I learned to type in high school on an old Royal typewriter with an ink-imbedded cotton fiber ribbon. In college, I bought a 1957 (the year of my birth) electric IBM typewriter that weighed about the same as a baby rhinoceros. When I flicked its power button on, I felt a surge as the machine locked the typing carriage in place and prepared to react to my fingers’ commands.

The ’57 IBM’s font was a classy, beautiful serif. When I struck a key, an arm with the corresponding letter slammed onto the paper, and the roller wall accepted the blow. The sound of repeated knocks on the page was magical and fed my urge to write more.

When I began my career as an advertising copywriter, I worked on an IBM Selectric, the Sherman tank of office equipment. The Selectric had a small plastic ball containing all of a font’s letters and symbols. The ball rotated and gyrated, fulfilling the writer’s commands.

The tap-a-tap-tap sound was seductive, intoxicating.

If I made a mistake, there was Liquid Paper, a miraculous concoction invented by the mother of Michael Nesmith, who played in the pop group The Monkees (I was once a huge fan). Each Liquid Paper bottle had an applicator cap. Dip the small brush, dab the liquid over the mistake, wait for it to dry, and type over your screw-up.

To err is human; to forgive is Liquid Paper.

Then came the technological revolution of the IBM Selectric II, with correction tape. If I made a mistake, I simply hit the correction button, and the error vanished. Covering my sloppy tracks was easy. Bada. Bing.

Technology saved our error-prone asses, and we were on the cusp of a great leap forward–– the personal computer. All my life, I had read and heard about computers, amazing devices that could do incredible things.

In college, some students took programming classes and worked with large computers. They sat at keyboards and punched cards with code–– tiny holes cut into manila cards–– and fed them into a computer. Magically, these coded cards made the hi-tech contraptions do their voodoo.

Computers took us to the moon and back. They assisted scientists and engineers in solving problems that led to astounding technological breakthroughs. Computers were the future. We heard they would make our lives better, and we gladly climbed aboard these tech time machines to better days.

My first interaction with a computer came in late 1984 when my ad agency supplied employees with IBM PC Jr.s. I had just given my two weeks’ notice and used this revolutionary technology to play the game “hangman.”

I was a true technocrat.

Before long, computers were ubiquitous, and we became masters of our publishing worlds. People with machines designed by Steve Jobs and his Apple zealots were on the cutting edge of tech designed to be reasonably idiot-proof. I happily paid a premium for Apple gear, so I didn’t have to learn complicated computerese.

The computer age took us where we’d never been before, but we were just clearing our throats for the roar of technological innovation that would forever change humanity.

We began hearing cryptic phrases like “the information superhighway” and “cyberspace” and “the worldwide web.” Alien language for a strange world that soon devoured us.

Suddenly, America Online discs were everywhere, invading the landscape like kudzu on Miracle-Gro. And once online, we discovered mysterious places called “chat rooms” where people talked with text in real-time, and planets called websites began populating the vastness of cyberspace.

One could download pictures and videos; they took ages to do so, but we patiently waited. By today’s standards, these early efforts were primitive, the bandwidth narrow, wait times ridiculous. But we suffered through the inconvenience. The thrill of seeing something from far, far away brought to our screen, thrilled us.

The wait was worth it.

Naked bodies were prime content. The porn industry brought us many significant technological advances: VHS tapes, digital photography (to avoid photo developers with curious eyes) streaming video, credit card verification sites, and Flash technology minimizing file sizes–– squeezing more nudity through precious bandwidth.

All brought to you by our insatiable demand for watching innocent pizza delivery boys and naive plumbers encounter women who had ravenous, voracious sexual appetites.

Technology freed libidos to run wild. Our massive planet became a global village where today many young people have warped porn star perspectives of what intimacy is, or should be. These individuals have difficulties finding sexual satisfaction with people in three dimensions. A Pew study recently reported almost a third of men under the age of forty to have erectile dysfunction as a result of their steady diets of porn.

Reality cannot beat what we’ve seen, and the seeds it plants for our fertile imaginations.

On to this brave new digital horizon rode perhaps the most insatiable of all human appetites–– our ravenous egos.

Technology-enabled social networks so that we could be as connected to others as we liked. We could broadcast our lives to the world, and anyone could participate in fascinating subjects like our breakfasts, political opinions, reviews on culture, and obsession with ourselves.

The 1998 movie The Truman Show was a fantasy where the mundane activities of ordinary life were made extraordinary by merely being observed. Before long, many people chose to live, Truman Show lives online, directing and starring themselves.

The technology was affecting humanity. Our news was instant, commentary constant, opinions rampant, analysis on-going, and we each became a broadcasting network.

The internet enabled people to self-select belief systems and their version of the truth. Conservatives could graze on a steady diet of conservative views, and liberals, libertarians, terrorists, conspiracy theorists, Nazis, and every flavor belief system could do the same. One could have all his beliefs confirmed and enhanced, affirming his world view.

The galaxy of opinions and information was an endless buffet, but our fragile egos allowed us to gorge on diets of self-sustaining confirmation. With the internet, we were assured of being the smartest person in the room because we designed the room, sharing it with occupants of similar beliefs.

The openness of cyberspace enabled the closing of minds. We could now select our facts, construct our truths.

Technologies like Facebook and other social networking tools allowed each person to build and promote his brand.

We were no longer human beings; we’d become “brands.”

The joke used to be that everyone in Los Angeles was shallow and phony because all they craved was fame. Now, that was true of almost everyone. Social networking made it possible to take your brand and promote it with blogs, updates, Tweets, notifications, pictures, videos, comments, and on and on.

Anyone could become famous. Videos went viral; ordinary people became overnight sensations.

The effect was the celebrification of humanity–– we all wanted that sweet, sweet spotlight.

Me, me, ME!!!

Social networks became our new drug. We craved Facebook “likes”, and when we scored, we got dopamine rushes. We became hooked, obsessed with our screens–– not just televisions, but smartphones, computers, and tablet screens.

Even Dick Tracy-like watch screens.

And many of us became total dicks along the way. We became rude in social settings, ignoring the flesh and blood we were with, instead of participating in the digital activity of our social network. Sure, this behavior is ironic–– social networking making humans less social, but it’s also pathetic. What had we become?

As a time-traveler, I see how our world has changed, and I long for the innocent days of stealing glances of the color TV at Larry Brooks’ store.

I yearn to return to landline phone conversations instead of constant texting.

All the glimpses of my past–– newspapers, color televisions, rotary dial phones, and typewriters–– they are all contained and improved on with my smartphone. All worldly knowledge, and potential for any Earthly delight, are available in the palm of my hand.

I observe how we suffer attention deficit disorders because of our constant distractions. Productivity struggles while we convince ourselves that multi-tasking works.

Sorry, where was I?

Oh, yeah. We are busy bees, but we’re making precious little honey.

Rage and anger seem ever-present as people feast on media feeding a constant diet of fear-inducing narratives. “If it bleeds, it leads.” Sadly, we see monsters in every shadow; we cocoon ourselves for safety and self-preservation.

We are changing and not for the better.

Some of us dream of living off the grid, but that’s a silly fantasy, a romantic delusion. The grid is everywhere; there’s no escaping it.

We live on the edge. Technology has infused our lives, for better and worse, and it will continue catapulting us down the tracks and into the future.

There is still an escape hatch, though. A respite from this manic journey–– and that is exploring the six inches between our ears. There lies a universe where we can perhaps find our peace and tickle the underbelly of our souls.

Until technology improves on that experience, too.