Mondays with Mike: Everything's amazing and maybe that's why no one's happy

Let’s start with this: A hammer is technology. How you use it is what counts. Hit a nail. Good. Hit a person. Not so good.

I say this because I’m about to venture into the realm of cranky person complaining about technology.
And I want you to understand that from a purely, 11-year old boy that lives inside of me point of view, I have always loved technology.

I loved cars. I loved TV. I loved Pong, the first video game. I loved the goofy little Sinclair computer. I about flipped the first time I saw a Mac. Getting Beth’s first talking computer up and running back in 1988 was like an epiphany. I worked for a company that was part of the dot.com era, and I remember the first time I saw a Web site, back in 1995.

But.

Of late, I find myself tiring of it. It’s a lot of work keeping up with it. And it feels sometimes like it’s a solution in search of a problem that I don’t have. A couple of viral videos, one by the now well-known Louis CK and another, have sort of piqued my cogitating on all this. Not sure there’s a stand to take, just observations.

During an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s show, Louis CK observes that we are living in a marvelous age, when we can travel in the air at 500 mph and we log onto the Internet to get information about absolutely everything. And still we complain when the experience isn’t perfect.

It’s a funny, observant piece. It suggests that we ought to be celebrating, instead of complaining about delays on the tarmac. So why don’t we? I think the answer is self-evident: As phenomenal as these things are from a quantifiable, technological point of view, they aren’t intrinsically satisfying.

For example: Intellectually, I know flying on an airliner is incredible. The accumulated knowledge that goes into one of those planes is enormous. The idea that I can be in Chicago at noon and walking Times Square a couple hours plus change later is still breathtaking (and still somewhat confusing).

But the experience of being wedged into a small space breathing crumby air is just that. And all the wonder in the world doesn’t salve it (and that’s not even mentioning the airport experience).

And this: Traveling 500 mph is incredible, intellectually. But from a sensory pleasure point of view, going 60 mph on a motorcycle beats flying in a jetliner like a drum. Heck, 30 mph downhill on a twisty lane on a bicycle is more memorable than a lifetime of airline rides.

The other video that has me thinking about technology is by Tripp and Tyler. It’s a brilliant little enactment of a conference call—played out in person, with all the glitches that we now sort of ignore because most of us get stuck in these awful exercises on a regular basis.

For example, for all the technological advances, on conference calls (and on cell phones) people can’t talk at the same time. In the video, there is the inevitable and familiar exchange where two people alternate “you go, no you go, no you go.” The video calls out multiple ways that we accommodate technology in absurd ways.

On the subject of phones, yes, my iPhone is pretty incredible. But if I want to talk to someone, nothing beats a land line. That’s a fact, Jack.

You’re reading this on a blog or in an email that was delivered to you, so I’m grateful for technology. I’m just not as enthusiastic for technology for its own sake as I used to be.

Which I think, brings me to something like a point: Technology has induced us to do things because we can, not necessarily because we want to or because it makes sense. It’s worth staying mindful of that, and to use technology rather than have it use us.