TECH UNSAVVY

The pandemic changed several things in my little niche of the universe. Like, three years ago I’d have never predicted that I would someday own more masks than one of those oversized temporary Halloween stores. Early on, in the Covid-caused shortage days, a sweet friend gave us a big bag filled with red and white cloth masks she had lovingly sewn herself. Though we sincerely appreciated the effort, and I did very heavily use four of them, she obviously did not use a pattern. Maybe she meant for them to all be a little different from each other, but a few were very wonky and misshaped. Several would have barely covered the creepy face on a Cabbage Patch Doll, while others would have better fit an oversized anteater or a 27-year-old Joseph Merrick. But again, it was a very heartfelt and appreciated gesture that we greatly benefited from in the early confusing days of the crisis. 

A few months later, my wife’s sister was able to send us a pile of standard cheapie disposable hospital grade ones that she was able to personally buy through the medical lab she worked at. Meanwhile, in an attempt to turn the sour life situation into tasty tart lemonade, my wife and I started having fun buying each other all sorts of wacky fun masks emblazoned with goofy stuff: animal faces, sports team logos, works of fine art, and various snarky phrases. Even a Taiwanese friend of my wife sent us a batch of beautiful artistic ones from Asia.

We ended up with zillions of them. There were handfuls shoved in our cars and coat pockets, while our favorites hung from hooks my wife mounted by the back door. All of those worked great until we started traveling again and we were suddenly required to wear the heartier ones. To try and make use of the ones we already had, I shoved multiple high grade carbon filters into slits I cut into the Elephant Man sized ones our friend originally made us. But eventually I broke down and purchased a big bag of international airlines approved overpriced KN-95 ones. It was getting ridiculous; I had to clear out two laundry room cabinet shelves just to hold all the Covid related masks, hand sanitizers, gloves, and test kits we had acquired. I eventually tried to donate most of that stuff, but nobody wanted it.

There were obviously lots of other small pandemic-caused changes to my world, but undoubtably the biggest was that it caused both my wife and I to start working from home. If not forced to, neither of our companies would have ever previously permitted that. But now that the 20-second commute Jeannie had been let out of the bottle and pushed off the rush-hour roads, it’s hard to imagine us returning to our respective offices anytime soon.

I guess it was predictable that the work from home thing would cause the further degradation of my work attire. Years ago, I was expected to wear a spiffy conservative suit to work. As times changed, that evolved into just a pressed shirt and tie. During a job interview several years ago, that led to a major career path change, my future boss tried to help pitch the position to me by saying that day would be “the last one I was expected to wear a tie.’ That was not why I accepted the job offer, but the thought of wearing business casual polo shirts, jeans, and comfortable footwear to work sure did seem appealing. When my physical office was forced to shut down due to the coronavirus, my typical workday outfits downgraded even more. It has now gotten to the point that there is little difference between the clothes I work in and what I sleep in.

Easily, the best thing to come out of the pandemic is my weekly family Zoom calls. It might have been because I am the youngest in my family, or maybe it was due to the large distance I live away from everyone else, but for years it always felt like I was the last to learn important family news. Constantly I would find out things long after everyone else. I’d hear some offhand comment like “yeah, Dad’s recovering nicely from that dangerous back surgery he got last month.” Back surgery?!?!   What back surgery?  When?  Dangerous?!!??!!??  Why didn’t anyone tell me? 

I used to always complain I was “out of the loop”. But now, thanks to our weekly on-line family chat, I’m as loopy as everyone else. We started doing the Zoom video conference calls not long after the lockdowns began. Since my parents were both in their 90s and traveling to visit them had suddenly become difficult, we all thought a weekly call would be a nice source of comfort for all of us.  It still is, and we have continued with them ever since.

Although sometimes my sister has to help her when things go awry, most weeks Mom successfully logs herself onto her laptop and clicks her way into the meeting with no problems. Sure, it’s pretty common that during the chats, she accidentally hits a wrong button, but we have all gotten very good at helping her navigate back to the correct screen.

Sometimes though, we are reminded just how tech-unsavvy mom is, like when she recently called the number on a random pop-up and let friendly nice “Lee from Microsoft” (a shady foreign call center cybercriminal) have full access to her computer. But in general, it is impressive how well she has adapted to using modern technology. Especially since my father treats computers with the same open-armed affection he would use towards invading man-eating nazi space aliens.  

Years ago, we tried to get my dad to use a computer, but he was already past the point of being willing to learn something new like that. He was perfectly content doing things as he always had, like balancing his oversized ledger style check book using the printed rows of tiny numbers on the long strips of white rolled paper that spewed out of his clunky 1970s desk-top-dominating adding machine.

It did not go smoothly years ago when we upgraded him from VHS tapes and LP albums to DVDs and CDs, so I think after that he became resistant to most any post-abacus ‘modern’ changes. He was furious when we recently had to replace his cell phone because his old-school antique no-frills flip phone was no longer supported by the network.  During our family Zoom meetings, if he happens to pass by, he will occasionally wave to everyone from the background behind my mom, but that is pretty much the extent of his interaction with computers.

Witnessing my dad’s extreme resistance to changing technology makes me hyper-aware of that trait. I worry I will one day travel down the same closed-minded road in a Flintstones foot-powered car. I mean, there are warning signs. My primary e-mail is still an ancient ‘hotmail’ address, I still use a dish to watch TV when I’m not streaming, and though I no longer have a MySpace account, I still mostly use Facebook and Instagram over trendier apps like Mastodon, Tumbler, TicTok, or WeChat.  At least I stopped getting the printed newspaper delivered every day and I preorder my Starbucks through the app.

With that fear in mind, even though I might sometimes be slow to embrace the latest, greatest, newest technology (my car still uses gasoline, and my cell phone only has one rear camera lens) I do at least try to keep track of the new stuff. Unfortunately, that sometimes backfires and all it does is remind me that I am slowly falling behind. That happened again this past week and it had me feeling as cantankerous towards technology as my father.

For a couple of months, I had been reading about ChatGPT. That’s the Artificial Intelligence powered chatbot engine with the ability to provide lengthy, thoughtful, and thorough (though often wildly inaccurate) responses to questions. It can do many things that previously were thought only possible by a human mind, like writing complex computer code from conversational instructions or creating detailed imaginative stories. I thought rather than being way behind the curve again, maybe I could finally cut some edges and get an early handle on ChatGPT. 

Yeah, that kinda’ didn’t happen.

Initially my problem was I had no idea what it really was.  Was this a Seri, Bixby, Alexa type thing, because my relationship with that group is about as smooth as Dr. Smith’s with Robbie the B-9 robot. Would this new technology be replacing my beloved Googly Googlizer or did it use some kind of mental mind meld like Mr. Spock used to communicate with the Horta. I figured the best way to learn to swim is by jumping into the deep end of the pool, so I tried to register as a user on Open AI ChatGPT, but apparently, I was already way too late to the party and they were temporarily not accepting more new users.

Then early last week I started reading how they were slowly integrating the same AI technology into Microsoft’s Bing.  I hate Bing.  Bing sucks. Using Bing is as frustrateingly infuriating as being a mediator trying to find common ground between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I thought, if this new stuff was Bing-like, maybe it wasn’t for me.

Well, a few days ago I got a notification that there was now space available for me to set up an account to interact with ChatGPT. I suddenly felt special. I excitedly registered, logged on, skipped all the tutorials, and started immediately conversing directly with this grand all-mighty mega-intelligent intuitive computer. It did not take long for me to start feeling let-down like Dorothy and the Yellow Brick Road Gang when they finally got in to see the Wizard.  Yeah, it gave me a long conversational answer to my obscure They Might Be Giants question and I taught it to write a poem about noodles in the style of e.e. cummings, but was that it? These felt like cheesy parlor tricks. There had to be more to this. I felt like I was using the Hubble Telescope to peek in my neighbor’s window.

I had made it aboard the newest trend ship in the technology ocean, but I had no idea where that boat was going. I felt lost at sea. I tried to learn more by doing some research into ChatGPT, but that just made me feel like a dinosaur. Or more specifically, a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to hang wallpaper. The online reviews were raving about its amazing ability to deal with ‘construct regex’, ‘development in the SEO domain’, and its ‘real language NLP model that was perfect for writing shell scripts’.  Huh?  Regex, SEO, NLP? What was this gibberish?

My eyes glazed over and I got an overwhelmed expression like a monkey in a Mini-mart.  I had no clue what any of that was. What had I gotten myself into? Where do I begin? How could I master this if I do not even understand what its uses are. Damn my liberal arts Communications college degree!!! 

I started understanding my dad’s emotions towards technology. There was just so much to learn and so much to make me feel incompetent. I can see why at some point it’s just easier to be like dad rejecting it all and sticking with what you know. I’m not sure I am anywhere near that place yet, but I think I’m slowly creeping closer.

Hey!!!!!   I wonder what ChatGPT thinks about this theory.

Dad and I