Gadgetry

Fearing the worst will often help it happen.

The new computer screen on my desk was wider across than my television and took up every inch of free space. I approached it cautiously, half expecting it might speak my name or demand a retinal scan as part of the log in process. It sat there, watching me as I slid into my chair and reached for my glasses. I had a fleeting thought of 2001, A Space Odyssey, and wondered if Keir Dullea might be hiding around the corner with a warning to use this new technology in peace. Also new, a tiny spy-size camera and lens attached to a stick-like mount, a scanner, and a new printer to replace the last new printer which was barely a month old. The long term goal of "going paperless" seemed to have made significant progress over the weekend.

There was a sterile feel to this new environment and I felt what has become an immediately recognizable sense of vague disconnection to my old and comfortable world as well as a recurring regret for never having leaned to type. Patients still sign in but I have to wonder how far off is a card swiping machine or a touch panel. I imagine self serve xrays and instead of a nurse escort to an exam room, I see a moving conveyor belt and a remote control video screen. Statements will be available on Facebook and the privacy laws will be rewritten. I feel a strong sense of regret for the old days - for letter writing, for text books rather than text messaging, for real film cameras as opposed to digital imaging, for roadmaps rather than GPS. The world is changing, reinventing itself, and not all for the better. I feel no regret that I will not be here to see all of it - technology is for the young and openminded. I came of age in the 60's and am disinclined to do it all over again. Too much change, too fast, too radical - it warps my overburdened memory and tires my weary mind.

Gadgetry - ubiquitous and progressive, making our lives better, faster, more free. So they say. It makes me yearn to curl up in a corner with a good novel before books themselves become obsolete.