The Cupertino Courier

Letters & Opinions

Technology moves a lot faster than I can

By Michael Cronk

I was buying my daughter a new iPod Touch the other day and it got me to thinking (again) about how technology has changed our lives. And it also made me feel old, really old. Or should I say dated?

I can still remember when computers were big and slow. I can recall when San Jose State University introduced an answering machine in its public relations office to give out information on campus events. The San Jose Mercury News did a story on it and featured a photograph of a young woman who worked in the office. She later became my wife.

My wife has seen big changes in her own PR business. Last year she discontinued a dedicated line for her fax machine. She can still receive faxes, but she has to plug it in on demand--only three or four times in the last 12 months.

When started in the newspaper business, I wrote my stories on a typewriter that I manually had to hit the carriage return. Electric typewriters made it into the newsroom a few years later. When I talk to the young reporters today, it's like they're astronauts and I'm relating to them how I learned to fly propeller planes and then went to jets and eventually rockets. They stand, or sit, there with wide eyes as I talk about how edits used to be done by hand and how type was set in hot lead by large linotype machines. I have a line of lead type with my name on it that I got when I visited a newspaper in Berlin many years ago.

Remember the first video recorders? My wife paid more than $1,000 for one as a Christmas gift for me when they were brand new technology and another $1,000 for one of the first DVD players when they came out. Now you can get a DVD player for $100 or $200.

My wife used to have a postage meter for her business but gave that up a few years ago. Now she says she rarely has anything to mail. Most communication is done via e-mail. We even pay our bills online.

And what about life before Google and the other Internet search engines when you had to find a telephone book to get an address, or an Encyclopedia to look up the difference between a lamb and a sheep? Or call a doctor to find out if a broken blood vessel in the eye (technically called a subconjunctival hemorrhage according to the Mayo Clinic website) warrants a call to the doctor's office. Any idle question that pops into your mind can be quickly answered with a few clicks of the keyboard. Anything you think you'd like to buy--individually-wrapped mint flavored toothpicks to vacuum cleaner bags to front row seats behind home plate of a Giants game--can be tracked down and purchased in a few minutes. We expect instant gratification and an answer to everything. We have no patience.

Technology is great. When it works. But it also makes us dependent. What happens when you computer is on the glitch or--worst tragedy of all--the cable goes out or the DVR freezes and doesn't record the season finale of Burn Notice.

I'm not a techno-geek. I can barely work my cell phone and digital cameras are still a mystery to me. I find it ironic for someone who has lived in the Silicon Valley most of his life.

But, that doesn't mean I'm not in awe of the high-tech firms and genisues who've made our little area world famous. I just wish sometimes that things didn't' move so fast. And make me feel so old.

Michael Cronk is editor of the Cupertino Courier. Contact him at 408.200.1055 or mcronk@community-newspapers.com.