Millennium Madness – Part II

I want to go back in time. Life has gotten way to complex. Everything you buy now requires poring through exhaustive manuals, configuring, programming, assembling, wiring. You can’t even buy preassembled furniture anymore. And email runs our lives. All we do is work, work, work. I miss the 80’s.

If it was the 80’s now, there would be only one remote control in the living room instead of four. There would be only four food groups. My haircut would be in style. If you wanted to make an airline reservation, you’d make one phone call and be done with it instead of spending hours on the Internet trying to nail down the best deal on the shortest flight from the nearest airport with the least number of stop-overs at the most convenient time of day on a plane having the window or aisle seat you want.

In the 80’s, computers (and therefore email) didn’t run your life. There was no sitting at a computer at home and at work and at home again all day every day, letting electronic communication rule your life. You didn’t sit on the subway and read emails on your smart phone. It’s become too all-encompassing, too much of a drag, too much time spent away from life. It’s like television – if you spend too much time in front of it, you’re missing out on the real thing.

And when you’re not on email, someone is instant-messaging you on your computer. Or calling you on your cell phone. If it was the 80’s, you’d wear a pager on your hip and return the call (or not) whenever convenient for you. You could escape. You were free.

Free, I tell you!

Today we are too accessible. But why is this necessary? We aren’t all brain surgeons or firefighters. We don’t have to be on call 24x7. Heck, even brain surgeons get to rotate out of on-call duty. Face it - as long as your wireless device is turned on and within reach, your entire existence is on call.

What happened to privacy and R&R? What happened to going home at the end of a long workday and not feeling guilty for not reading your work email at least once (if not perpetually) before you fall into bed exhausted from information overload? In the 80’s, your most expensive home appliances didn’t have to be upgraded or replaced every 5 years like that computer that you spend too much time on today. You didn’t have to spend days or weeks shopping around for the right computer or cell phone with the right connectivity plan and all the right features for your job. You didn’t have to get locked in to a phone contract or count the number of minutes you talked.

Because your “computer” consisted of an IBM Selectric typewriter, you didn’t have to spend an entire weekend setting it up, installing applications, moving data, waiting on the cable guy, wiring it to the Internet and – god forbid – wasting countless hours on the phone with lousy technical support getting it to work as expected. You basically plugged it in, popped in the ribbon cartridge, and turned it on. (My friend Vonceil calls the modern equivalent an "Apple.")

In the 80’s you didn’t have 280 different passwords to memorize and re-memorize with each password expiration. You knew the PIN number for your ATM card and the combination for the lock on your YMCA locker, and that was it.

Technology is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it’s become too time-consuming. It’s too complicated for the average person. It’s even becoming too complicated for the computer-savvy. And when it fails you, getting to a resolution is too frustrating and time-consuming (and expensive! – after all, time is money). Technology companies would be smart to invest massive R&D dollars into simplifying their technology solutions. I’m telling you, that’s the ticket. Not everyone out there is a computer programmer – if electronics manufacturers could make devices that are truly “plug and play,” they’d sell more devices and have more happy customers.

The Internet is a technology revolution in its own right. It’s a fantastic source of information and a great communication vehicle. But, is it possible that - (dare I say?) – there is too much information out there? Are our queries returning too many hits? Are wea ll suffering from information overload?

I want the simple life back – if only for a few days. I want to be zipping around Charlotte in my ’76 Datsun 280Z on a warm summer night with the windows cranked down, a Bon Jovi cassette in the deck, and a stack of Domino’s pizzas on the passenger seat awaiting delivery to a hungry customer. Hard to believe I did that for nearly six years of my young life. But it was good, honest work and kept me in tip-top shape.

That was a job that entailed a lot of energy (i.e., running constantly to meet 30-minute deadlines), manual work (scrubbing down the pizza joint at 2:00am), multi-tasking (answering phones, taking orders, making pies, tending ovens, folding boxes, doing inventory….), and a penchant for good customer service. I loved it, and I was good at it. And I have the “employee of the month” trophies to prove it. Ha!

Of course, Domino’s Pizza is where I learned the basic work ethic and customer service skills that are keeping me afloat in the technology industry today. Yet…I sure miss those days when stress amounted to whether the next traffic light would be red or green. And when I left work after a long hectic shift, my shift was over. I didn’t have to go home, unload a roving office, plug in a laptop, boot it up, and “catch up” on work I missed on the ride home in an attempt to make tomorrow’s work day a little less insane. I miss that ability to let go of work after work. I miss "After Hours." (Excellent movie, by the way.)

So just shut down your browser and go sit with your spouse or kid or pet on the back porch for a bit. You’ll be glad you did. Your Inbox will still be full in the morning. Trust me.