Full Court Press

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.

Batman plays Atari

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.

16 Candles… and then some

It was my birthday on Sunday and I was pretty excited about it. At least until I woke up.

No, it wasn’t an existential despair. When you hit that middle-of-life meter, every day of life is appreciated, especially the ones when you don’t need the night stand to prop you up in the morning.

It was just the realization, in fact a more crystallized version of it I have had for each of my last ten birthdays or so, “Damn I’m old”. I know old is a relative term. I spent this birthday with my parents and they are really old, as in seeing Charlie Chaplin movies when they first came out and requiring tutors to learn how to operate a printer old. But I’m old too.

As evidence, I was born during the Nixon administration. His first administration. I remember when they celebrated America’s bicentennial in 1976. I remember when the Cincinnati Reds were the dominant team in baseball and was of proper video game obsession age when Atari was en vogue.. When kids today talk about being good at RPG’s (Role Playing Games), my first instinct is well in my day and age, that had absolutely nothing to do with video games and unfortunately, never involved me. I even remember when the Bee Gees and Donna Summer were the kings and queens of the music mountain respectively.

Birthdays, at least in the late 40’s are quite Shakespearean, part comedy, part tragedy, part romance and if your memory still functions at a slightly pre-digital age level, part history. It also involves the four major psychological stages of any major event tinged with both joy and sadness – embracing, denying, ignoring and downright bewilderment.

As mentioned the first stage is a little like Christmas. Not that I formally celebrate Christmas but I know what it’s all about since I worked in retail for several years. In my case, and this is where I will begin to show my “immaturity”, the budding anticipation is not about the presents, but about the birthday well-wishes. In my case, since I am a Leo (euphemism for benign narcissist, or just egomaniac), I assume (falsely) that my birthday will be the first thing on everybody’s mind when they wake up on August 5 and my text inbox and Facebook wall will be flooded with enough messages to force Apple and FB respectively to enlarge their data farms.

I envision this type of scenario involving a distant friend from Connecticut. Wife of friend who wakes up at 6 am – “Hey honey I am really concerned about the flooding in the basement. It ruined the carpet, the piano, several couches and now I see mold spores building on the wall and ceiling”.   Husband – “Yea that flooding will cost us a vacation or two but did you know it’s Mark Elman’s birthday today.”   Wife – “Oh wow honey I completely forgot. Ha, why are we wasting our energy worrying about the half a foot of water in our basement? I think the sun is already shining a little stronger”.

Showing that tad of self-restraint I recently gained from doing 12 minutes of uninterrupted yoga, I did fight the urge to check, at least until breakfast, my text and FB inbox, sensing that the acknowledgements will multiply exponentially during that next hour or so.

Every year I tell myself the same thing – “Dude, you were born during the Nixon administration. You owned a bunch of eight track tapes. You are not exactly a rock star and two, you should be well over your need for instant affirmation. Why are you even considering checking FB?

Can someone say Peter Pan?

Ironically though, the need for validation may have gotten stronger. Back to the Christmas analogy, my urge to check FB becomes stronger than my 12 year old nephew’s urge to see what is under the tree on Navidad. It’s 7:45 and I give into that snake in the grass voice which tells me that since it’s my birthday, I am completely free to do whatever my heart desires. Since I don’t have the app – My form of bargaining with God, or the devil. I’m still debating on this – I launch the FB website on my Google app and click on the magic notifications button.

My prediction was somewhere between 100 and 3900 wall posts, especially from Obama and Mick Jagger who are both Leos as well as Patrick Ewing who shares my birthday.

My prediction was slightly idealistic. There are six wall posts. As tempted as I am to conclude I am losing my popularity mojo, a bit of Shakespearean inner dialogue reminds me that especially in Miami, people tend not to be so alert in the mornings.

The beautiful reality of the adult birthday sets in around 8:15 when my three year old ( another example of my immaturity in that I did not bear fruit until I was nearing my mid 40’s) came barreling down the stairs to wish me a happy birthday and give me a birthday hat. Now if ever there was a reason to separate the emotional wheat from the chaff, this was it, especially given that Adrian also wanted me to open the fridge for him so he could “give dada his Happy Birthday Cake” and light the candles.

My wife was the Steph Curry of the day, as she surprised me with several Lacoste tennis outfits and a matching one for my son. She also bought me a pass to an evening tennis clinic which was advertised by her as a chance to work on my doubles game but perhaps the  real motive was to get me to meet other tennis enthusiasts who are nearing or have already hit retirement age.

The real truth be told, as much as I tried to play the part of the maturing father, I did spend a good chunk of the day musing about how many people had posted to my wall. After all Sunday was Mark Elman’s birthday and aside from deadly wildfires in Greece, Trump’s all-out escalation of a trade war with China and a nuclear standoff with Iran, and an earthquake in Indonesia this belongs at top the list of important news. All joking aside and even though those closest to me were literally with me or sending me well wishes by text, my goal was 50.

The real challenge on an aging man’s birthday is how much to let himself go. Do I take the approach that if I don’t practice self-indulgence on my special day, when else will I feel so encouraged to do so, or try to set the table for the rest of the year? Do I eat ice cream and check sports scores whenever the spirit calls or do I finally say, God amazingly brought me through a year when I injected Dunkin Donuts and checked baseball updates while driving on the highway, so I better quit while I ahead?

“To indulge, or not to indulge that is the question: Whether tis nobler in the soul to enjoy the slings and arrows of outrageously good temptation or to take up arms against a sea of impulses, And by opposing, feel like the aging dullard that I am and perhaps, not just metaphorically, leave some food on the table.”

I eventually keep my vow to do something which makes me feel really young. This is of course nearly impossible when you were born during the Nixon administration, but if there is one thing my many birthdays have taught me it’s to find creative ways to beat the system. My nephew and I eventually go play mini golf and as fate would have it, there was a huge arcade there with life sized Galaga and Space Invaders games as well as air hockey. 

In the name of full disclosure, I did check my FB feed twice more that day. I’m no mathematician, but I think the growth was arithmetic nor exponential. I got 40 posts or so including a few from really random people which for whatever reason, which brought a strange satisfaction.

I am unsure whether that quest for affirmation is the result of being a Leo, being an apostle of Larry Davidism or just being a digital age living being. Likely a combination of all three. I’m also glad last FB check revealed that I had neglected to wish several friends and family members a Happy B-Day the previous day

The last “visit”  also coincided with a birthday resolution to only check FB 3 times a week but give myself slightly more leeway with Instagram. So much for maturity.

Postscript:

 

Three day after my b-day, there is some slight regret over not indulging more. Maybe birthdays are the worst time to try to keep up appearances, as a little extra pizza, Mint Chocolate Chip and time at the Space Invaders game might have done my spirit some good, especially with the school year and teaching six courses looming. Besides, if Trump continues to piss off Iran, China, his wife, and pretty much every other head of state in the world, who knows if we will live to see next August. I suppose birthdays are a lot like prom and weddings – it’s hard to make up for missed opportunities two months later.

As for resolutions, I made a few. First, cut down on the sugar. I was never a really good sugar daddy anyway. So far it’s been a teetering failure but I rationalize it as getting it all out of my system while on vacation. Second, cut down on the texting, especially sending heartfelt holiday greetings to the ex cleaning lady and landscaper. Third, get an extra ten minutes of sleep daily. I know I still believe that the world is eagerly anticipating my completion of a novel, but first, no one actually reads books anymore, and two, that form of literary inspiration has likely passed me by.

Fourth, pay bills on time, which as elemental as it sounds, is actually one of the Herculean labors I am not well equipped to perform as it requires either spending less than I have in my account or organizing my checking accounts.

Lastly, be realistic. Whatever this means. In my case, the days of getting nearly triple digits in FB Wall Posts are over as are the days when I can inhale pizza and Mint Chip Ice Cream with impunity. And while I am at it, a quick look in the mirror reveals that no student will ever tell me again I look like Tom Cruise nor for that matter, even Tom Arnold. It’s goodbye Don Quixote and hello Dorian Gray

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In the meantime, I am already looking forward to the next birthday. If for no other reason, my birthdays occur when school is not in session and my son will likely be able to blow out all the candles without any outside assistance. He might even text me a Happy Birthday wish.

Now these are real reasons to get excited. Especially when you were born during the first Nixon administration.