New Technology Can Lead to Digital Distress
by Ted Rueter

Going to the laundromat is one of life's enormous inconveniences. You have to drag your clothes to the washer, make sure you have plenty of quarters, plug them in, toss the laundry into the washing machine, wait around for the "spin" cycle, put the clothes in the dryer, and then hang around for them to dry.

Sounds like a real hassle, doesn't it?

Well, help is on the way. IBM and USA Technologies recently announced that universities in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Michigan will begin using new technology allowing students to pay for their laundry using their cell phone or debit card. Better yet, students can visit a web site to learn when their dorm's washers are available. They will receive a cell phone call or an e-mail message when their muscle shirts and bikini briefs are done.

Our friends in Japan are also striving to make life more "convenient." In Tokyo, the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company is now manufacturing high-tech toilets that flush by remote control--with adjustable, motorized seats. The toilets also analyze your urine, and send an e-mail to your doctor if anything suspicious shows up. Also, Matsushita's bathroom mirrors take infrared pictures of your skin and hair, and recommends the proper treatment to bring out a youthful shine.

These sorts of gadgets are everywhere. There are now more than 400 million cell phones worldwide, chirping in churches, funeral homes, restaurants, and movie theatres. Many cars now come equipped with alarms, DVD players, fax machines, wireless Internet capability, and global positioning systems. Health clubs now offer web access on stationary bikes. Many junior high students show up with cell phones, CD players, two-way pagers, hand-held organizers, super calculators, and MP3 players. More and more campers are "roughing it" with digital cameras, televisions, air conditioners, generators, washer-dryers, microwaves, and satellite dishes.

The contraptions are seemingly endless: key stroke monitoring software to collect dirt on your ex, briefcases that deliver 100,000 volts of electricity to a thief, refrigerators that will play your e- mail in your own synthesized voice, and locator devices ("the Digital Angel") that are implanted under your wrist. Human cloning is on the way.

All this "progress" has produced a backlash. A USA Today survey found that 60 percent of consumers have stopped buying the latest high-tech devices, 43 percent believe technology is advancing too quickly, and 40 percent believe technology is too complicated. More than one-third of respondents said they suffer from "digital distress" in shopping for high-tech goods. In 2001, 29 million adults stopped using the web--nearly double those who dropped out in 1998.

James Gleick, author of Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, argues that Western society fosters "hurry sickness." Technology has produced a "multi-tasking, channel-slipping, fast-forward species" that breeds competitive, impatient people. We are addicted to fast food and instant messaging. And while Americans state that sex is their favorite activity, most people devote four minutes each day to the cause.

Yale political scientist Robert E. Lane, in The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, contends that all these technological advances can't buy us love. Indeed, he finds extensive evidence of growing clinical depression in all advanced industrial economies. Lane asserts that market-based prosperity leads to stress and depression, because it breaks all the bonds of family and friendship. "Efficiency" comes at the price of humanity.

Leaf blowers? Muzak? Boom box back packs? Keyless entry systems that cause your car horn to honk? Lights that respond to voice commands? Do we really need all this stuff?

They didn't live this way in Mayberry.

Published in Bloomington Herald-Times, November 30, 1999