Aug. 25, 2005 - 20:42 MDT

EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

I read a column in the Rocky Mountain News of August 24, 2005 that piqued my interest and deeper thoughts. By Gersh Kuntzman of Newsweek. In full:

FASCINATING TECHNOLOGY HIT ZENITH OF POINTLESSNESS

"Are you such a multitasker that the single-minded job of driving has gotten boring ? Don't worry, now there are DVD movie-players for the front seat of your car ! Are you so alienated from nature that you can't tell when a piece of fruit is ripe ? Never fear. A new line of packaging tells you when it's ready to eat."

"Are you too impatient for y our morning coffee to wait eight minutes while your automatic drip machine brews a fresh pot ? voila ! Coffee that makes itself."

"Impressive ? I suppose so. But incrasingly, it seems to me We Americans are so agog over the latest technological gadgetry that we overlook a simple fact: We usually don't need it. Take self-heating coffee from a Delaware company named On-Tech. Flip the can on its head, press a button on the bottom, then shake for 10 seconds. Turn it back over and let it set for eight minutes. A mixture of specially treated water interacting with calcium oxide makes a piping hot cup of morning joe. Sounds yummy, but wait. Eight minutes plus 10 seconds ? Your old pal Mr. Coffee,. can brew an entire pot in half the time ! Still, On-Tech plans to introduce a whole line of such drinks, beginning with a latte created by Wolfgang Puck, who used to be an important chef but whose rep nowadays resides chiefly in your supermarket's freezer section."

"There's a huge need for this product," says CEO Johnthan Weisz, "Everyone has such an on-the-go lifestyle." What next ? Think self-heating soups, hot chocolate and teas -- not to mention oatmeal and chili."

"Is OnTech aware that Campbell's the intergalactic soup giant, is working with Ford to put small microwave ovens in cars ? (The only downside to this invention is that America might not have enough personal-injury lawyers to handle the future lawsuits."

"And why stop with with ovens when you can turn cars into home theaters on wheels ? Makers of automotive DVDs say that a high percentage of sales now come from people who want to watch movies in the front seat. (I)So what if 39 states have laws forbidding just that ? Manufacturers protect themselves by requiring drivers to press a button affirming that he/she will not actually watch the screen while the car is in motion -- what Mary Poppins used to call a "pie-crust promise," easily made and easily broken."

"You don't have to be a Luddite to believe that the self-heating can or in-car theater are examples of our obsession with throwing technology at something that's not even a problem. "This is America today," says David Gregg, senuir editor at Best magazine and a technology hunter for the Early Show on CBS. "Everything has to be faster and faster. We're not making new poroducts. We're just reinventing things to give us instant gratification."

"The list goes on. Among my favorites is RipeSense, "the world's first intelligent sensor label," as it's manufacturer bills it. Ripening fruit gives off aromas that can be detected by a sensor affixed to the packaging, going from red to orange and finally yellow. "By matching the color of the sensor with your eating preferences,," the company explains, "you can now accurately choose fruit as ripe as you like it." "Waiting for fruit to ripen ? Isn't there some machine that can do it faster ?

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So here am I - - one of the last troglodytes nodding in agreement with Mr. Kuntzman. To catch the wave and surf in to success I intend to invent an automatic "Tongue In Cheek" machine that pokes an artificial tongue in a synthetic cheek while simultaneously saying, "Yeah Right, and then blowing a Bronx Cheer. Man, that ought to go like balls of fire at some venues today. Only thing I have to figure out is how to make the darn thing identify which side is Bronxing which side.

But before that I have a most intmate problem. I have this fancy little alarm clock which has a nine volt battery to make sure it keeps running during power outages. The main reason I bought it is because it is loud enough to wake me up. Oh, it is one fancy dancy clock. Digital, two alarms, using either tone or radio to blast me out.

It sort of goes along doing its own thing at eight AM in the morning, it either gives me a combination of loud radio stations or a nerve rattling tone. And there is no way for me to guess which it will be. It does not alternate, rather sits back and comtemplates which will annoy me most at any given morning.

The instruction booklet is clear cut and seems to be understandable, only nothing works like the book says it will. I tried once to set it to wake me up to catch a flight. So worried about missing the flight that I lay there watching the digi-minutes flip by until it was time to get up. Of course the damn thing didn't go off, what did I expect ?

I am now under the control of a honking Dell computer, trying to do what it tells me to. Only thing is, we don't speak the same language. It may understand me and not cooperate, but I certainly don't understand the foods on its menus nor does the XP Windows For Dummies guy talk in my language.

Now we have telephones that are wireless, cameras, organizers and e-mailers all in a palm held do-hickey that has buttons too small for my fingers to manipulate, lack of a decent volume control and other disadvantages for this old man. These new-fangled inventions of today appear to me to be an EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES . . . . . . . . . . . . .