Carolyn
J. Rose
Don’t
get me wrong. I think technology is a good thing. I don’t miss rotary dial
phones, cars without power-assist steering, manual typewriters, or
black-and-white TV screens the size of cake pans that offered only fuzzy
pictures.
But I
worry that we’ve become too dependent on slick, fast, and easy. I worry when I
come across kids who can’t tell time on a clock and have to check their phones
for a digital readout. I worry these same kids aren’t developing skills that
could come in handy during a power outage or in the wake of a fire or
hurricane. And I worry that all of us are being put in a position where there
are no back-up options, where we can be held hostage by technology that should
work, but doesn’t.
To
explain what I’m talking about, let’s visit a restroom in a modern movie
theater or restaurant or airport, a restroom where technology has been
harnessed in the interests of sanitation and public health.
We
find toilets that sense when you’ve completed your mission and flush themselves
automatically.
Except
when they don’t.
Then
you face the choice of scurrying away—in a nonchalant manner, of course—or
hunting for that tiny button on the wall or somewhere at the rear of the
toilet. Pushing that button defeats the purpose of the auto-flush feature by
exposing you to germs the feature was designed to protect you from.
And
then there’s the sink and all that goes with it—the soap, water, paper towels,
or hot-air hand-drying apparatus.
Now, I
don’t miss those continuous rolls of linen towel that always seemed to be at
the end. I don’t miss struggling to pump soap from a nearly empty well, or
grappling with a faucet someone put too much force into turning off. And I
don’t miss using my fingernails to try to loosen a paper towel jam, or slamming
a blower knob with my hand to get it to work.
But
sometimes I wish I had those options.
Recently,
in an attempt to wash up, I was trounced by technology. Lulled into a false
sense of security by my ability to extract soap from a wall-mounted fixture, I
attempted to bring water forth by tripping the beam at the base of the faucet.
I had no luck. But in the process of moving my hands and arms about, I managed
to trigger the paper towel machine on the left and was gifted with two inches
of brown towel.
I
moved to the second sink and tried again to coax out a stream of water. No
luck. But I accidentally got an inch of paper towel from the machine on my
right. Back at the left-hand sink, the faucet finally coughed out an anemic
stream of water. But neither towel machine would deliver even half an inch more
than I’d been presented with by accident.
In
disgust, I dried my hands on my shirt. As the door closed behind me, I swear I
heard the paper towel dispenser and faucet laughing. Not only that, they were
taunting the soap for giving in to my demands so easily.
