I am not sure I was ever a big fan of button pressing. For semantics sake, I will differentiate between “pressing buttons” which I equate with trying to agitate someone and the inevitable “button pressing”, which is merely an expedient, and one we do for nearly unlimited reasons, including to lessen agitation.
Sure I like Frost Museum-esque interactive machines as much as any kid and likely hit the Atari joystick red/orange button faster than I blinked. Plus I am quite enamored with the essential features of a remote control or standing arcade Game such as Galaga or NBA Jam.
But once life moved into the PS1 through 4 age and comparable innovations transformed the smartphone, laptop and motor vehicles, the buttons themselves started to intimidate me. For one, the accidental click of any button could do anything from ordering a pizza, entering hydroplane mode or firing lasers at the car in front of me.
I struggle to see all these technological bells and whistles as signs of scientific progress. Why if gaming devices and phones are perceived to be experiencing perpetual advancements are they becoming equally more difficult to operate?
Take the windshield wiper. Throughout my teens through my deeper foray into the professional world, I knew exactly where the wiper button was, how to adjust the speed and certainly how to shut it off, especially during a cloudless sky. Now I have to hit at least six buttons to determine which one is the wiper and keep smacking a different set of buttons to hope they turn off. Let’s not even get started on the car air conditioner.
The driving force behind innovation in consumer products is user-friendliness. That and capacity. In the latter case, no doubt a cellphone has nearly unlimited capacity in that it has become a public library and a functioning office all in one. But user friendly? Let’s consider the operating features.
Let’s start with the basics. First take any portable digital communication device and try to find an “on-off” button. Go figure, there aren’t any. Maybe if the device ran on AA batteries which could last up to a year. But on a lithium battery which requires daily charging, no switch that is labeled “on” or “off”.
Specifically with the omnipresent i-phone, try altering the volume and you very well could be shutting off the phone. Close your eyes in hoping that your button pressing will lead to shutting down the phone and boom, likely you just snapped two pictures. It’s bad enough that with the Sistine Chapel of i-Phone iterations, the 10 and 11, the one button we all needed is no longer there, the master button at the foot of the phone. What makes that an improvement?
Now assume you are tired of hearing or sensing the 110 different notifications which came your way over the last hour and you want to focus on something more present, let’s say the tropical garden through which you are walking. You try to play the game of “out-of-sight, out of mind” by placing the phone on silent and in your back pocket. Everything is disconnected until you bend down to tie your shoe. The phone, which clearly has a rather stubborn mind of its own, decides it’s going to make some calls on your behalf, likely to a client from ten year’s past or the one colleague you least want to speak to.
Yes these are what are aptly called first-world problems. And they are minor nuisances compared to the real problem – Once you buy a device under the assumption that you now own a portable communication machine, they in fact own you. For one, the i-Phone trolls play a game of musical chairs with our apps. One day the famed green texting icon is one screen 2. By Friday, even if we haven’t downloaded any new apps, it’s on swipe screen 4.
Plus by virtue of making us tap the phone so many times, I can’t tabulate how frequently I have fondled my phone to realize I can’t remember which button I had intended to press in the first place.
Even if the only icon I pressed was my default text messenger, it would be sensory overload enough. Thank God my phone is password-free, otherwise that would be six more taps before I could figure out which of the 17 new messages required a response. But one can no longer try to navigate just the sensory overload caused by one messaging platform. Almost every active communicator, especially those with friends who were born outside the U.S., also uses Whatsapp. More on that in a bit.
No matter where I turn, there is a button which requires some attention. Here’s a typical pre-dinner scene. My wife is getting dinner ready while my son grabs my idled phone and Face-times my dad. Since I am holding my daughter, the distribution of tasks seems quite functional.
Except that as my son is speaking, he naturally clicks on the “effects” button which opens up an array of GIF’s so vast that he could click on every one for the next three hours and still have more to send. That and when Alexa heard Adrian say “Neil Diamond” she automatically assumed he was speaking to her and thus starts playing “Sweet Caroline”.
Since my wife had just heated a dish in the microwave for 30 seconds, the off button requires pressing as does the stove which is now sending pheromones because some water has leaked from a lid. And just in the background, a drying cycle has finished, a feat which too requires some acknowledgement in that a stacato screech occurs until I turn off that sensor.
Objectively speaking this may register below 7 on the digital pH scale. But it irks me, especially when I am trying to decompress from a day which involved spending at least 90 minutes in the car, a good portion of which was spent trying to figure out how to operate the touch screen temperature controls for the back seats. That any trying to locate the control button for my prepaid subscription to Sirius radio.
But back to the smartphone conundrum. Somewhere along the line despite how advanced i-Messaging and one-click technology became, there arose a need for a parallel universe in digital communication. Call it cloning or having a messaging mistress. This novelty was not without practical benefits. It allowed for Wifi-generated free international communication, with far more bells and whistles than Skype. But as novelty acts go, it exceeded its intentions and became a particularly popular domestic interface.
Such is the source of my confusion. All forms of default smartphone communication have already mastered that feature. It’s so good that one can simultaneously have an audio chat and a video chat with the same person. Plus you can send and receive pictures during that call. There is literally nothing that the standard Apple messaging platform can’t do.
If the issue was a binary one, Coke or Pepsi, I’d be delighted. Variety and personal preference are healthy. But it’s not one or the other. The addition of WhatsApp has made it so that every time I check my i-Phone, I have to drink both Coke and Pepsi. In fact I just did.
To add to the cognitive dissonance, or sense of double-dipping, both apps are green colored and display a small proruption in the upper right corner to indicate unread messages. WhatsApp is particularly popular with South Americans and they will proudly tell you when you genuinely claim you have not seen a message they sent you, “Oh, I just use WhatsApp”.
Really? Why? To me that is saying every time you get back home, you enter the house through the back door. Maybe your reasons are entirely plausible, but I am Mark Elman, a name about as gringo as it gets. Surely you must realize I come from a time and place in which WhatsApp is not the communication platform of choice. I don’t even know where Apple has chosen to move that other green app today.
Perhaps I am not up to speed. I just assumed WhatsApp was the back door,or more specifically a backup platform, a quick trip to Winn-Dixie in the event Publix was too crowded or temporarily closed.
In the end, I will chalk up all of this button pressing overload to the law of unintended consequences. None of the app or device makers worked in tandem and neither do their users.
But maybe it’s time they start doing so. This one-click dystopia which activates all possible electronic sounds at once is not the realm for me. Especially in the early morning or around dinner time.
If for some reason it’s impossible to create some common ground here, at the bare minimum, please Alexa look the other way when we are trying to have a normal conversation and please don’t sent me a WhatsApp message unless you really have to.
When it comes to the digital sphere, I am not ready for a parallel universe. Let’s just say it really presses my buttons.
makinghismark 