Here's Where I Am

We have generally been early adopters of new technology and that is what made moving up to the Northwest reasonable for us, as we were both still working part-time when we came here and even that early 1992 version of the Internet made much communication possible if you knew how to make it work. I bought my first computer in 1983, I believe: a Kaypro with CP/M, a 9-inch screen, and a word processing program named perfect writer, and perfect it was. I still miss that program; only yesterday, I was complaining to Ed that perfect writer made it possible for me to capitalize all the letters in a section with an easy block and control-u. As far as I know, word doesn’t do that.

So I am not a believer, generally, in the idea that all technological change is in fact progress. For the record, I think that CPM was a better operating system to start with and that WYSIWYG is an infinitely inferior way to do word processing (for those who don’t remember, that means ‘what you see is what you get’), and that is what word gives us. However, we are Technology R Us, for the most part: digital cameras, Ipods, multiple computers, printers, scanners, wi-fi, blue-tooth stuff, thumb drives, flash cards, external drives, not to mention the helicopter simulator with GPS.

What I do not have is a cell phone, which makes it of some relevance that, according to the December newspaper, the opponents of the Verizon cell-phone tower to be built in Point Roberts have finally given up. I doubt if they’ve changed their minds about it being a bad idea to erect that tower, but maybe they’ve run out of money for the lawyer or maybe the lawyer has convinced them that this is a losing battle. The tower is to be built in Baker Field, which is public land and something of a recreational area for residents. There is, I believe, a baseball field there and the skateboard park is also in that area. However, it is also home to a water tower and an old landfill. The Parks Board saw the tower as reasonable use and benefit to the community (both because cell phones would then be fully usable here and because there would be some revenue from the land lease that would serve local needs). There was some concern from the opposition that the towers were dangerous (from a physical well-being perspective), but now they seem to be saying that their opposition was based upon the need for preserving public green zones.

For the rest of us, the change in this policy largely means that we can buy, if we have not previously bought, a cell phone and join the 21st Century in that manner. Ed actually has a cell phone because he needs it when he is flying, but it doesn’t work here, so it’s very much like not having one, given that he flies only a couple of times a month. The one time I borrowed his, I locked my keys in the car in Bellingham and very much could have used the phone to call AAA, if only I could have figured out how to turn it on. Which I never figured out and just went into a store where I’d just bought something and asked to use their phone. Simple enough.

Children, grandchildren, friends, relatives, and acquaintances in the outer world all have these phones and, I guess, they must find them useful since they seem to use them all the time. Since I rarely get to the rest of the world, I rarely see anyone with a cell phone unless I have for some reason come near a high school where every student seems to be in constant communication with somebody. In addition, at the airport and on buses, I am exposed to very expansive cell phone use. And by expansive, I mean that those cell phone conversations expand to cover everybody in the space. My basic understanding of the cell phone from these experiences is that the primary purpose is for people to be able to call those near and dear in order to say, “Honey, I’m on the bus/plane now.’ Followed by other home chat of no interest to anyone including the direct participants. Except that I feel like I am a direct participant. No longer any public space and public space rules in the world of the cell phone user; the users’ view seems to be that wherever they and their phones are is private space and outsiders who are inexplicably there should have the decency to avert their eyes and take up deafness.

Well, who knows? I suppose I’ll eventually end up with my own cell phone and then I can call Rose when I’m driving the mile-and-a-half to her house and tell her that I’m almost there.