Albert Einstein

I have held back my holiday shopper’s review for two reasons. The first reason is philosophical. As long as one isn’t tied to superstitious beliefs why not have one’s day of celebration and gift giving fall later, say mid January. That way one can avoid the pre-holiday sales where you get 15% off of items that were just marked up 70%. Maybe hold the holiday even later, when sold out items are back in stock. This doesn’t prevent you from fighting to buy things that are in limited supply when everyone else does, but when you fail the stress of the deadline is lowered. Best of all, you can get reviews of products from real people you know who got stuck with them. You’ll also hear about great new things whose existence got lost in the overload of the holiday advertising clutter. And better than best of all, you know what Santa (or his parallel figures for the Festivus-rest-of-us) forgot to bring. You can become the best gift-giver if not a outright hero this way.

Of course the real reason this post is timed this way is that this year’s new gift items were an extreme letdown. There were a few amusing items such as spider looking camera tripods or pre-made “Broken Meter” signs in case you have nothing to write on in the car and can’t figure out that you can write your own in advance and have it at the ready in your car without buying these. But there were no breakthrough gotta-haves, or even a breakthrough may-as-well-at-least-it’s-new. All the big news and advertising concerned things getting better, more features, more complicated. These all fit into a few categories, New and nouveau Ipods , Smart-phones, GPS’s and portable memory for computers or the other devices listed. Earrings that hold 2-gigs my dear? Perhaps Agent 99 can wear those as Max fiddles with the Smart Phone that is his shoe. Then there are combinations of the devices already listed.

There wasn’t the next cool item as the Ipod was a few years back, there wasn’t even the soulless marketing monster toy that did nothing but make kids cry because of the intentionally limited supply. Needless to say, there was no simple yet amazing toy to tickle the imagination of children of all ages. Just improvements and complications to what we already have. True, a GPS can tell me 6 million places to go, but what’s the point if there’s nothing worth buying at any of those stores. Then there’s the deeper question when buying things just to have (or give) things despite the lack of anything worth having: Can a GPS tell you where to go when you’ve lost all direction in life?

Now I’m going to make a fantastic statement, then defend it brilliantly. There was absolutely no technology available this year. None, zip. To the untrained eye it was all and only technology, but that’s why this blog is here to expand your vision. A very wise friend of mine who routinely fixed everyone’s computers once explained that the trouble with technology was hidden in the true definition of technology: “If it works, it’s no longer technology!” My regular phone works even when the world itself is falling apart, but no matter how many bells and whistles we put on it, it’s, it’s, what’s the word, QUAINT. Might as well have Sheriff Andy pick it up and ask to be connected to Aunt Bee. My cell phone drops calls like there was an extra gravitational field beneath it, but it’s not quaint. I have been known to take a walk with a transistor radio so I can listen to a ballgame on AM radio. Oh sure, the transistors are really small, as if they were actually no longer transistors at all, but the antenna still draws stares as if I beamed down from Mars. A quaint old fashioned Mars. Face it, just using Mars in the metaphor is quaint, should have said Kronos (Klingon home world for those too quaint to know).
A couple years ago the idea of an AM radio to hear a game amazed kids, but now they just want to know why I don’t have XM. Really, buy an iffy gadget and pay a monthly fee for reception and dependability that, considering even a long walk stays within the local broadcast area, can’t compare.

Okay, let’s make this simple. Quill pens were technology in their day. Ball points aren’t. Computers are technology today. Even super advanced “space” pens, are not technology. The difference? When your computer crashes and you look through hand written notes to put your life or project back together, you’ll see the light.

So everything available this season was better versions of the items that wowed us over the last decade or so. True, they don’t work as reliably as a pen or a transistor radio, so they are still “technological,” and they certainly can cause headaches. But if you like technology you probably already have an Ipod, a GPS, a computer, a cell phone, a Gameboy etc. If you are buying one mainly because it works so much better then you are buying it for “anti-technology” motives.

I am in this category presently. I was an early GPS user. It was great in its day, and the wow factor was exhilarating. It was almost worth picking up that ax wielding hitch hiker just to show it off. Unfortunately, the fact that it keeps instructing turns that are no longer there, then takes so long to recalculate the course that you keep making new mistakes, causing it to start over, until you finally pull over and wait. So it’s time for modern processor speeds. So I started to compare GPS models. Even if you eliminate GPS as part of a cell phone or laptop and keep it to dedicated units, it seems like there are billions and billions to choose from. If you figure out that you want to limit it to units with a feature such as live traffic data, do you want to pay for a dedicated service, pay for a satellite radio feature, wait for the internet based types, or get a unit that gets traffic info from an FM source. It’s very difficult to navigate the GPS maze.

That’s when I got the tap on the shoulder, or at least the voice in my head: “Let the force guide you…” While I pondered if that meant let it guide my choice, or guide me instead of machinery such as a GPS (and why has nobody named a GPS unit “The Force”?) But it was the Professor’s voice playing with me. As much as he loves the cleverness of the entire GPS setup, and that it uses so many of his discoveries, including General Relativity, it is a complication. Now that the process of buying has become its own complication, he really thinks its more trouble than its worth. Besides, his walks might have lost their inspiring nuance if he didn’t risk getting lost as he got lost in his thoughts. He did once call Princeton to ask for Einstein’s address. When they refused he explained “This is Professor Einstein, I took a walk and can’t find my way back.” And for you whipper snappers, that call was made on something called a pay phone, (unless he knocked on a stranger’s door to use their phone) Cell phones wouldn’t have worked even if he had an advanced preview model in the 1950’s. They are dependent on an infrastructure, another drawback typical of technology.

Hmm, that could be the start of another posting…

PS : I’m still buying a GPS, but I’ll wait until I have no time, then do it quickly, like ripping off a bandage.