Dean Laux
May/June 2020 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE 73
We both have cell phones, but for a long time
mine was her hand-me-down when she got anupdated
version, and I was always a generation or
more behind. Now I have an iPhone X (she got it
for me), but hers has many more apps, and I only
use a few of mine. If I have some sort of problem
with mine, my wife, son, or one of our grandchildren
fi xes it for me.
I’ve never taken a selfi e. I have a Facebook account,
but I never use it except to see pictures my family
and friends send me. I routinely refuse Linkedin
requests, and I am (justifi ably) wary of the scams and
identity thefts that social media facilitates. I recently
learned to message people on my iPhone, and I can
use FaceTime with some assistance from my bride.
We Skype with our kids, but she handles the calls
and hookups. And I use email extensively without
any problems, so I’m not a complete technology
dope. Maybe.
I hate to make phone calls to a commercial
provider, because I hate the lack of a human being
to speak with on the other end. In fact, that’s a major
problem that my generation – and maybe even the
Baby Boomers – have: We like to deal with other
humans face to face, in live action.
We like the give-and-take, the touch and feel
of live companions, the visual sensation, the side
conversations and spontaneous jokes, the reminiscences,
especially when seeing someone we haven’t
visited with in a long time. Skype and FaceTime don’t
make up for that. When
we go to a restaurant,
we want to talk with
one another, not watch
the families at other
tables all using their own
cell phones, isolated at
least emotionally from
their seatmates. I see
our modern technology
having a serious negative
effect on interpersonal
relationships, rather than
bringing us together. Our
opportunities to reach thousands of people quickly
and easily through the internet and social media also
deprives us of the value of one-on-one, face-to-face
contact.
So, can we close the gap? Maybe we can, to
some degree. When I was young we lived with our
grandmother, and we saw her every day. She and my
Mom cooked and cleaned, and held
jobs. We kids played with friends and had chores
to do at home, and we took time almost every day
to do something with Mom and Gram: play the
piano together, play cards, do jigsaw puzzles on the
kitchen table, listen to the radio together, tell each
other what else we’d done all day.
While we teased Gram incessantly for some of
her set ways of doing things, and she teased us back,