(To the tune of “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette”)

Like the feller in the Merle Travis/Tex Williams song about cigarettes, if I ever met the guy that invented the computer, “I’d murder that son-of-a-gun in the first degree.”

Now it ain’t ‘cause I don’t use one myself

And my carpel tunnel is still in good health,

But that devil machine has me flyin’ into a rage.

‘Cause electronic addicts are all the same

At a romantic dinner or a football game

Everything’s gotta stop while they check their Facebook page.


I still remember my excitement when I bought my first computer for my office, all set now to join the electronic age in which documents would be produced with lightening speed and paper would soon become obsolete.  I was almost as excited when I bought the second one.  Now, not only would my secretary have a computer but I would, too.

I was slightly less excited when I bought the first computer for home, but it was still a pretty big deal, sitting there in the dining room for the whole family’s use.  And then came another home computer all my very own and then another for my daughter.  Eventually, I just had to have a color monitor and then my wife had to have a color monitor, and then my daughter, and then it was the second telephone line to connect to the internet and then the DSL line and then the wireless home network and then I had to have a laptop and then my wife had to have her own laptop and then…

*

Was it just overnight when the business world went from the question, “Do you have a fax number?” to “What is your fax number?” to “Will you scan that and e-mail it to me?”  Or does it only seem that way?

Was it really just last week when “car phones” were practically the size of an attache case?  When the salesperson called me at work to try to sell me one and I said, “Lady, I sometimes go get into my car just to get away from the telephone”?

And last week everybody in the family had to have a pager and six days ago there was our “family” cell phone, which became my wife’s cell phone, and then I had to have one of my own and then so did my daughter, and five days ago all the antique analog phones had to be replaced by digital ones, and four days ago the cell phone merged with the PDA so we no longer had to carry two devices (but everybody had to get a new phone), and three days ago the phones were obsolete again because they couldn’t take pictures, and two days ago they all had to be replaced because the old ones couldn’t surf the web and check e-mail and yesterday they were all replaced yet again because they couldn’t hold the entire ASCAP and BMI music catalogs in their memory and today I’m afraid to read the morning paper for fear technological advances since I went to bed will cost me yet another thousand dollars.

*

Now, I’m no Luddite.  I used to be quite a forward-looking kind of guy.  More than thirty years ago, when I was still in law school and some years away from my first computer, I predicted the digitalization of law libraries, with 0′s and 1′s replacing miles of sagging bookshelves lined with code books and appellate court reports.  And I was right: today, legal research is blazingly fast compared to that quaint era.

And when hand-held scanners with optical character resolution (OCR) software first appeared, I bought an early one, convinced it would eliminate hours of secretarial typing – only to discover that a good secretary could type a document in half the time it took for a scanner to scan it and the software to turn it into words.  But I was right: today, scanners and their software are also blazingly fast, leaving the secretaries with much less typing to do and more time to spend surfing the web, fiddling with their MySpace page and e-mailing their friends.

In fact, it seems that everything is blazingly fast today except me.  Life and business spin around so rapidly that I’m afraid I’ll be injured if I try to hop off, even if only to catch my breath for a moment.  It’s not that I’m no longer forward-looking; it’s just that I’m so dizzy I don’t know which way to look.

*

There was a time when a letter or contract had to be roughed out, typed, edited and polished, retyped, polished again and typed once again, leaving time for a bit of reflection in between drafts.  “I’ll get that in the mail to you as soon as I can,” I might say.  “You should have it within a week.”  Today, as often as not, I get the question, “And can I have that this afternoon?”

Time was when I might drop a note to a friend, maybe handwritten or maybe typed.  Either way, I would generally read it over when I was finished and then had to fold the paper, find and address an envelope, lick a stamp and put the letter out for the postman.  There was plenty of time for reflection and the messages were seldom flaming or ranting.

Today I punch that “send” button smugly and only later stop to think that calling my best friend an “idiot” or ranting extensively about his religious or political preferences was probably not a great idea.

Time was when I could take out-of-town guests for a drive along California’s beautiful Big Sur coastline and they would be awestruck by the view.  Today they spend the trip texting their friends back home.

Time was when I could go into San Francisco to meet my daughter for a leisurely lunch at a nice restaurant and both of us could enjoy being away from our respective offices for a while.  Today she brings the office with her, popping outdoors every five minutes to take yet another phone call or receiving and replying to yet another text message between every bite of salad.

I can no longer get into a good barroom discussion over the English word with the longest string of consecutive consonants or who fixed the 1919 World Series without somebody whipping out his Blackberry and calling up Google or Wikipedia.  I can’t go to a nightclub without seeing half the fools there snapping pictures on their cell phones and shooting them off to their friends to prove they were really in the same room with a famous jazz singer.  I can’t even check my own e-mail without finding a dozen messages saying somebody has just “tagged” me or “poked” me on Facebook or has just taken yet another idiot quiz asking them what kind of vegetable they think they should be.

I’d murder that son-of-a-gun, I swear I would.  And if I really drew a jury of my peers, I’d never be convicted.

Now the other night my wife and I

Were havin’ a little wine and feelin’ a little high.

The dishes were done and I’d put on an Ella CD.

The candles were lit and the lights were low

And we started dancin’ close and slow;

It was one of those nights just made for her and me.

Now the wife was hot and I was hotter –

She was wearin’ that low-cut top I’d bought her –

And my favorite perfume in just the right amount.

I said “Let’s pretend it’s our honeymoon.”

She said “Steve, get ready; I’ll be there soon,

But first I just gotta check my Facebook mail account.”

.

Search, search, search those Google hits.

Click, click, click and when it’s time to call it quits

Tell St. Peter when you go upstairs

You can’t leave this world’s affairs

You just gotta have your dose of bytes and bits.

*

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If you’d like to hear Tex Williams’ original version, you can find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbKQklwNScA

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