The Wonders of Techiness!

You know, I’m an old guy, well into my senior years, and I’m baffled by all the techy possibilities around me even though I truly think they’re wonderful!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve had a Sonos music system in my house for well over a year. It’s worked for only about two or three days. I just didn’t know how to make it cooperate with my cell phone or my iPad. The instructions that came with the unit weren’t really complete and clear enough for me. Our youngest kid came home from Manhattan to spend several days with us this Christmas. She went up to my tree-top office and played with the system for about five minutes and then came down to show patiently me how to get whatever music I wanted to play on my Sonos system. It wowed me! If I want to play a little Barbara Streisand, I can just take my cell phone out of my pocket and hit a couple of buttons and – zap – there’s Barb, singing her heart out. I can adjust the volume and move through the songs, or select a different artist and album with total ease. I can pause it, silence it and back it up with ease. I can have a speaker on in the bedroom and the speakers off everywhere else. Wow!

She’s also taught me about Pandora Radio… Wow! That’s neat!

Later, she’s going to set up my camera for me so that I can use it with my iPad and view the shots I’m going to take or look at them immediately after I’ve taken them. Save ‘em, delete ‘em and even adjust the exposure and clarity as I’m working with the camera.

It’s a remarkable world. I get a little baffled by it from time to time and I’ll curse occasionally at how slowly I pick up on things. The world is changing so fast. Of course, we won’t get to see many of the remarkable changes that are coming (drone delivery of our mail and daily paper and on-line purchases) and maybe that’s regretful and maybe not. I’ve seen plenty and I’m impressed.

Certainly the next generation will be able to figure out how to eliminate poverty and suffering world-wide. Now that would be something very, very special that I’d really like to see.

I’m not afraid to leave the world to the care of my children and their children. I’m optimistic. I think they’re going to do something very special with it.

Now, however, I think I’ll sit back and dial up a little Leonard Cohen music and read one of these old-fashioned books (set in real type on paper pages) that my kids gave me for Christmas. Later on I’ll watch a little football on my flat-screen, high definition TV and then tonight I’ll go downtown to have dinner at the restaurant I’ve wanted to try for months (the reservations were made on an iPhone and it received a confirmation as well).

I know none of it sounds very amazing to you, but it amazes the dickens out of me. It seems like only yesterday that I had to pick up the telephone in my home town and tell Milly, the operator, that I wanted to reach Chester 85 in order to call my best friend. We thought the technology was incredible. Television hadn’t come to our home yet, but my old man was trying to explain it to me and promised we’d get one pretty soon. I remember my amazement when he told me one could actually watch a baseball game being played in New York City on it.

“You seen one, Pop?”

“Yep! Yer Uncle Gus has got one! We watched the Giant/Dodger game yesterday.”

“Geez, Louise! No kidding?”

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