Unless you enjoy the screaming of a hungry 1-year-old with wet pants, you can stop reading right now because I am going to say a few words about computers and the internet.
You might very correctly point out that there was a faraway time in an unpolluted world when old folks couldn’t see the need of putting the newfangled wheel things under their sleds.
This is because old people have always resisted change. Not long ago you read in this space how my friend Bernard Davis struggled to sell pot haulers to lobstermen. Their grandfathers had hauled hand over hand, so that was good enough for them, too.
Bill Lucas invented a machine that will snap rubber bands on lobster claws. I know this because he rented a booth at the Rockland lobster festival and tried to sell them. Bill told me he’d worked as a sternman and that after putting a rubber band on 20,000 claws, it got old.
So he invented a banding machine that we suspect will, like the pot hauler, eventually be standard equipment on lobster boats everywhere. But it will be years before most lobster catchers will even test-drive a machine that will save them time and make them money.
Bill and I agreed that it’s impossible to keep up with the mysterious new technology. He said he had to press a button on the key fob to open the trunk of his new car. One day while he was rinsing it down he saw a button on the back and wondered what it was. He pressed it and jumped when the trunk opened.
Having admitted that some change is good, may we now ask why almost anything having to do with a computer is likely to push old men over the edge, turning us into irrational, babbling madmen?
Booking.com is an online company that people turn to when they want to find a place to spend their next vacation. It is a powerful engine that directs thousands of affluent Europeans to our Maine hotels and resorts. The Booking people have sent many nice people from all over the world to our bed-and-breakfast, and I pay their commission with fearful reverence. Their success might be attributed to their user-friendly web pages. Even I am able to easily access them and tweak things on a daily basis.
Do you ever get the impression that some web pages are created by angry children trying to get back at you for being an adult? Airbnb has a convoluted nest of web pages that could convince your brilliant grandchild to throw her hands in the air and become a clam digger. On the few occasions when I’ve even been able to find my Airbnb calendar, everything seems to be set in stone and I can’t update anything. Trying to use it drives me crazy.
And have you noticed that someone is constantly “improving” your online weather report? You just get so you can figure out if it is going to rain tomorrow when some evil child locked in a Russian prison makes your weather page look like a challenging video game.
I don’t need this aggravation. Most old men are frustrated by a challenge, and the tools that you and I need to survive on the electronic superhighway are changing too rapidly. Open up your favorite old website, and it no longer works. My Gmail was changed a month or so ago, and now managing the people in my Gmail account is more difficult than playing volleyball in hip boots.
Do you remember the email program you used 20 or so years ago? It would do anything you asked it to. Mine would sort people into groups. Stack them up, down, sideways. Print off lists of everyone who lived in Ohio so you could tailor your message to that particular group.
Those days are gone. If there is a use for the Gmail we have today, it might be introducing infants in cribs to the red, blue and green colors of the rainbow.
Anyway, my question for you is: Have you ever seen a new web page that was better than the one that preceded it? If you can tell me about a new web page that made your life easier, I’d like to know about it.
And then there is this Twitter thing we hear about every day. There seems to be no positive aspects to Twitter. I don’t know how Twitter works, although anything we hear about it indicates that the only thing you can do with it is write things like “an arrogant dope with no talent,” “a true loser” or “You were born stupid!” Keep looking and you find “a weak and somewhat pathetic figure” and “a dishonest slob of a reporter.”
Those are the exact posts I’d make at 6 a.m. if I’d been up all night trying to figure out how to use the thing.
The humble Farmer can be heard Friday nights at 7 on WHPW (97.3 FM) and visited at his website:
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