on using techmology

In an age that has witnessed the rapid spread of sophisticated hand-held computers, I find it hard to fathom how certain people still don't know how to use digital devices. “There's no instruction booklet,” they often say, or, “I don't know how to get back to the place where I can check my email.” If you are one such person, here are a few tips.

Tip #1: No matter how many buttons you push, you won't break the device. Every button has a name or icon on it to indicate what it does, so push each button in turn, wait to see what it does, and then memorize the steps needed to get to a certain area or to activate a favorite application. The hesitation to push a device to its limit is likely a holdover from analog times, when flimsy devices would break as soon as the user pulled what he should have pushed and twisted what he should have left alone. Computers may crash, but they tend to start back up again, good as new, so forget bygone concerns and have at it.

Tip #2: There are no instruction booklets because these devices are designed so that even brain-dead, snot-nosed teenagers can use them. Teenagers aren't smarter or better at using technology than the average adult – they are simply less afraid of making mistakes and just mash buttons until they get their device to do what they want it to do, whereupon they follow the same steps over and over again. (Besides, the instruction booklets of yore confused and frustrated more often than they helped, and only maybe one in ten users actually read them, so if you use that lame and tired excuse, please stop.)

Tip #3: If you find yourself in an area of your device that you don't recognize, find a button that looks like an arrow or that has the picture of an arrow on it and keep hitting that button until you can go no further and you find yourself back at square one. Then, start hitting buttons until you get where you want to go, and stay there. Only a handful of kids today do outrageous things with their hand-held computers; the rest use but a few applications – email, instant messaging, a social networking site, a music player, and maybe a video service – without ever delving into the inner workings of their devices or pushing their little toys to the limit.

Tip #4: When in doubt, ask a brain-dead, snot-nosed teenager for help. Seriously, nothing strokes their egos more than being asked to show Granny how to get back to her email inbox so she can see all those pictures of cherubic children her daughter-in-law keeps claiming to have sent. Get your device back promptly, though, unless you want to lose it forever to the fleet fingers of a trolling teen.

In the end, your stoic refusal to back down from a challenge will win the day and afford you all the advantages of the hand-held digital device. So step once more into the breech and mash those buttons until your tablet says, “Meep.” And, of course, mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

mirrors – mirrors everywhere

Look around you. That's right, take a good look around you. Unless you are visually-impaired or you lead a rugged, comfort-less existence out in the woods somewhere, then, while just looking around, you probably looked at a mirrored surface, something in which you perhaps saw a reflection of yourself having a look around. Many things with which we surround ourselves these days are high-gloss, shiny, or mirrored, including our laptops, automobiles, mobile phones, tablet computers, windows, watch-faces, doors, door-handles, hubcaps, handlebars, plates, pots, utensils, and eyeglasses, to name but a few. Oh the many mirrors one can gaze longingly into, losing oneself in the strangely hypnotic activity of making eye-contact with oneself. So is its profusion, and such is its commonality, that we modern persons can hardly imagine life without the mirror.

Consider, however, that just a few thousand years ago the primary reflective material was a calm surface of water, which only reflects well under optimal conditions and which requires one to lean or suspend oneself over said water to the point that objects start falling from pockets and fluids start dripping from the face. The ancients, it appears, understood the dangers of self-observation, telling a cautionary tale about a young man named Narcissus who so loved looking at his own reflection that he dove into a pond after it, where he was promptly ensnared and drowned by pond-nymphs, who had been lying in wait. (Similar to other old stories, I believe that the tale of Narcissus is meant to be taken as a warning of the dangers of emulating his foolish ways and getting caught in the tractor-beam of one's own reflection.) It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that many people could afford mirrors or, for that matter, glass; before the 18th century, the only persons who could afford mirrors were fantastically rich individuals so corrupt and so cruel that one wishes they'd have stared at their own reflections more often instead of eradicating villages and enslaving and torturing their own subjects. (I believe that the myth about seven years of bad luck resulting from a broken mirror dates to before the Industrial Revolution, when hand-portable reflective objects were prohibitively expensive.)

So, today, are we better off having all these mirrors everywhere, or can mirrors be blamed in part for our rational-selfishness (i.e. avarice), that wasteful, ego-centric, quasi-capitalistic economic system that drains our lives of intrinsic value and imprisons our hearts in shells of self-serving egotism, rendering us incapable of respecting ourselves, each other, and Nature? I find it logical to assume that staring constantly at one's own reflection reinforces the notion that we must first look out for ourselves, for number one, before sacrificing our precious time or hard-won greenbacks on others. Since thinking about these questions, I have tried to look into mirrors only when necessary, such as when shaving my face or checking for ticks, avoiding even looking at my own reflection when typing; when I do stop to look, I am often shocked to see the image which I have come to associate with myself staring back at me, an image which correspond but poorly to the ebullient spirit that burns deep within my loins. Which, I think, is the crux of the matter: mirrors disassociate one from one's tender humanity, from one's intrinsic goodness, fueling one's ego and facilitating the ego's hijacking of the soul, which results in greedy, self-righteous, and short-sighted behavior such as conspicuous consumption and self-banishment into wage-slavery. Therefore, dear friends, avoid a mirror today, and rescue the soul from the ego's sticky clutches. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit