"Bringing up Facebook on your phone doesn't make you tech-savvy."
Numerous articles have been written on Generation X, analyzing us as an economic and social force. We have been called innovative and tech-savvy; but we have also been accused of having a sense of entitlement. Both these claims appeared in the "comments" section after yet another online article about us, this one examining our prospects in the so-called jobless recovery. There is a reason my articles do not have a "comments" section: most people's opinions are of no consequence, a waste of bandwidth; if you have something to say, there are plenty of blogging venues out there, or better yet, create your own web page.
Anyway, the above line was the only comment in the crowd worth remembering. "Bringing up Facebook on your phone doesn't make you tech-savvy." It appears to have been written by an older person, who was unimpressed with young people who think they are "all that." Creating the code that allowed the rest of us to bring up Facebook on our phones -- now that's tech-savvy. But where does tech-savvy begin?
Cassette tapes cannot be listened to forever. After awhile, the magnetic tape starts to stretch out and sound distorted. This is why I am now using Audacity to convert all my old cassette tapes to .mp files; I can keep listening to them, recopying the files as needed, as long as the current digital formats last: get a double-ended cable, plug one end into the cassette player's headphone jack, and the other into the computer's microphone jack. And I lament the fact that Audacity came along too late to save my old 8-tracks. (Did 8-track players even have headphone jacks?) Does this constitute "tech-savvy"?
When the backlight on my old laptop went out, it was time to replace it, saving the old hard drive, which still had a lot of important files. Problem: the old laptop used the old IDE interface, about as far removed from the SATA as a gramophone is from a CD player. But I was not ready to give up; I searched the Web until I found the right adapter that would let me use my old IDE-based hard drive as an external drive on my new SATA-based computer; then I had to navigate the advanced security settings to get my new computer to acknowledge my ownership of my old hard drive. It's better than paying someone $40 for a data recovery from a perfectly functional drive, right? But, does figuring this out constitute "tech-savvy?"
The truth is, technology is so multifarious now, tech-savvy is entirely relative. So you can write the code to create your own apps. Good. But now say your car breaks down. Today's automobiles are so computerized, it takes a specialized diagnostic machine to communicate with the car and "ask" it what is wrong. So really, your auto mechanic is probably at least as tech-savvy as you are. And if the electronics in your microwave go out, are you savvy enough to put them right again? Even the most tech-savvy of us, when we get right down to it, are only savvy in our own limited area of interest.
I have probably said this too many times already, but we Gen-Xers stand in a transition zone. We were the first real video game generation -- and the first generation to continue playing video games into adulthood. We learned penmanship and letter-writing in school, only to find that we seldom use them in the age of email. Within our own memories, television advanced from an aerial receiver on the roof picking up broadcast signals for free, to cable and satellite service in which we pay to see the commercials. (If you don't believe me, do the math: in any given TV-watching session, keep two timers; with one, time the amount of actual program, and with the other, time the amount of commercials. Figure out what percent of the total broadcast is commercials -- and then take the same percentage of your monthly bill to find out how much you are paying to see commercials.)
Now, I would never suggest that we ought to go back to the 1980s and stay there. Those years had their share of downsides -- not least of which was that there was no Internet (at least not for most of us; computer nerds had something like it even then). Most of my employment contacts were found through the Internet; likewise reconnecting with long-lost friends. But appreciating how far we have come does not mean I have to forget what we left behind.
At my sister's house, there are boxes and boxes of board games, sitting on the top shelf of the bookcase. Now, I am sure that when she bought them, she had in mind actually playing them. But in six months, only once did I see one of them come down off the shelf -- and that only because I asked my niece to teach me Othello. Have you ever noticed that games like Monopoly or Risk go on for hours? This is because they were designed for the days before television completely took over family entertainment. On a winter's afternoon, a family might indeed have spent hours around the game board -- or the jigsaw puzzle, or the card table -- not just playing of course, but also keeping each other's company. There may have been a television set in the house, but it wasn't on all day long. And perhaps you have seen, in old television shows, or maybe a movie depicting the "old days," a family gathered around the piano, one playing it, the rest singing? They were not up to the caliber of the famous entertainers of the day, but that didn't matter; they were making music only for their own enjoyment anyway. How many years has it been now, since anyone sat down to the piano that may or may not still be in my mother's house? Television seems actually to have caused the demise of a musical instrument, the violin-uke; its manufacturer, Henry C. Marx, explained:
Since the late 1950's the Marx Music Company has been more or less dormant due to a lack of interest in buying such instruments by the public. With the advent of television and other such diversions, people no longer had time to entertain themselves with playing a musical "hybrid" like those we manufactured. The factory was completely closed in 1972 when my father C. H. Marx died, and now stands just as it was for over forty years.And this is occurring in every country throughout the world. In all my travels, I always seem to arrive too late; in back streets and rural villages, where once a traveler might have found a fiddle or concertina, a guitar or marimba, there is now usually only a radio. Wherever recorded music ensconces itself, people stop making their own music, content to leave that to paid professionals.
Probably, there have always been those who think the end is near -- even in secular times. James Howard Kunstler is one such in our times. Read his blog, "Clusterfuck Nation," and it would seem that, between the passing of peak oil and the unraveling of currencies, we must surely be on the verge of a return to Medieval times. As Kunstler put it with his characteristic bluntness, it doesn't matter how many apps you can pack into one phone, if you don't have the electricity to run it. For Kunstler, "alternative" energy technologies are a mirage; they shimmer in front of us and give us hope, but when we get there, we find them evaporated into thin air.
I, for one, hope Kunstler is wrong. Every generation alive today has grown up knowing electricity and the automobile; transitioning away from these would be unimaginably difficult for everyone. We can scarcely conceive of a "normal" world without these two inventions, even though, compared to the span of human history, they have only become "normal" since yesterday. Even more disturbing, though, is Kunstler's contention that the world after collapse will be more hierarchical than today. He has a point: just look at any "traditional" society. "Tradition" is really just a nice word for enshrining old hierarchies, in which everyone knew his or her place. For people like me, of an anarchist bent, the return of "traditional" hierarchies would be even worse than the loss of electricity and the automobile.
But whether Kunstler is right or wrong is not determined by what I would like. I have to consider all possibilities, even the most unpleasant ones. And so -- if we Gen-Xers really are as "tech-savvy" as we think we are -- it would be wise to turn some of that savvy to finding other ways of doing things; ways that will work in a less-wired, less-connected world.
As long as there are computers, the Internet, etc., I am sure I will keep finding reasons to use them. But I will not forget what I had before. I have never owned a television set, and have no plans ever to own one, mainly because making time to watch it would require me to take time away from other things I enjoy more. I stay off Twitter, not because I have anything against it, but because I have no use for it. Firstly, whatever I may be doing, I do not assume all my friends want to know about it, since they have their own lives to live; I don't constantly wonder what they are up to either. Secondly, when I do have something to communicate with my friends, it is going to be longer than 140 characters. Strange as it may seem in the age on online gaming, I miss those evenings of Scrabble, with actual wooden tiles I place by hand on a board that lies flat. And although I know my playing my bansuri will never compare to any of the popular recording artists -- probably never will be heard in a local bar, or even busking in the street, nevermind on a stage -- I play it anyway.
