Technology isn't our way out

Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

Si prefieres, aquí puedes leer la versión en castellano.

I wanted to start writing more, but I didn't want to sit in front of my computer for more than the mandatory 40 hours a week, so I had a great idea… at least that's what I thought. I'd buy a tablet, one of those nifty ones that you can attach to a keyboard. That way, I’d have a lightweight piece of equipment I could take anywhere I wanted, and I could write far away from my 9-to-5 workspace. You got it, I thought technology was the solution to my problem. Isn't that what technology is there for? To solve problems, making our life easier?

The first step was to figure out which tablet to get. In my day, you knew what you had to do: you'd go to the nearest Gadgets“R”Us, look for the guy with the pit-stained button-up shirt and the thickest glasses, and he'd tell you what to get. Those days are gone. Now we have the internet—the never-ending repository of what some people call information, but is mostly pornography and garbage. If the day of a fully immersive internet ever comes, I wouldn't want to smell it.

Supposedly, all that information turned us into technologists who can sift through the infinite lists of product specifications and know exactly what we need to buy. I started out with the operating system, then the memory and processor, the front and back camera resolution, and storage. It didn't take long until I was lost in a rabbit hole of abbreviations and specifications I neither understood nor cared about. Oh, how I miss the days when you could get whatever color you wanted, as long as it was black.

But worry not, the online product reviewer will tell me exactly what I need. They come in all shapes and sizes, and what they all share in common is a lack of credentials. Why the hell should I trust some random person posting a video on YouTube? For all I know, they get their information from Wikipedia. Nonetheless, there I was, taking notes and listening to what Johnny Hexadecimal and Sarah Tech Girl were telling me were the pros and cons of spending a thousand bucks on this lump of pollutant metal or the other. What are they getting out of this? The pleasure of helping out a confused middle-aged man like me? I doubt that's all they're in it for, but I'll listen to them anyway.

Having no other resources, I go for it. Johnny told me the flux capacitor in the XR-28 was the best, and according to Sarah, the same model did the best urine sample analysis. The XR-28 it is! So I go to the website to order the tablet that will solve my problem. I also wanted a keyboard, and on the website, they had an online assistant. I was in the mood for some personalized service, so I opened up the assistant and asked for some help. As soon as I opened the chat, it greeted me: “Hey there! How's the weather in Barcelona? The CTS-10 keyboard would go really well with that tablet you’re considering." To which I answered, “How the hell did you know I wanted a keyboard... and where I live?” There was no answer. The assistant gave me advice in an uncanny tone, and I added the products to my cart. I'll finally have the satisfaction of handing over my hard-earned cash. I think that feeling is what they call an orgasm nowadays, right?

I punch in my credit card details for payment, and the dark magic of modern consumerism begins. The transaction between the website and my bank kicks off, and with it, the authentication ritual. Authentication feels like opening an apartment door that has a dozen locks because the person who lives there is afraid of the foreign neighbors across the hall. I put in a password and think that's it, but then I have to punch in some code I get on my phone. These bastards also have my number! I'm not finished yet— in some kind of reverse Turing test, the machine needs me to prove that I’m not a robot. Not without a moment of existential doubt, I pass the test after a few attempts at finding traffic lights in pictures that are so blurry, they look more like a Rorschach test in a mass psychological profiling exercise. Payment successful. Thanks to 24-hour delivery, tomorrow I’ll be a proud box recipient.

But I don't trust these people, so I go straight to my email to see if I received the confirmation message. I sigh in relief—it’s there, with a link to track the delivery. When I was a child, my parents didn’t keep such close tabs on my movements as we do on our online deliveries. I click on the link to see where my delivery is, and the screen reads, “Hi there, there is no shipment with the given ID. Contact your vendor for more information.” I decide to do what my parents did when I was a kid and didn’t show up on time for dinner: shrug my shoulders and think to myself that it’ll arrive, and if it doesn’t, it’s one less thing to worry about.

After a few hours, I started feeling like a bad parent, so I checked my email again to see if there was any news. I saw a new email in my inbox and open it. “Dear customer, your package couldn't make it.” At first, I was relieved—at least it looked like my package existed—but the ambiguity of the message left me puzzled. It sounded like my tablet had some kind of accident and nothing around it knew CPR. Again, I shrug my shoulders and hope it's just a delay. I am going to be a great dad one day.

Two days pass, and I find myself in a Zoom meeting procrastinating from home when the bell rings. My package arrived. I set it aside for a moment so I could open it after work. The Zoom call ends, and I look at the time. It’s three in the afternoon, and I am not in the mood to start any of my action points from the meeting. I call it a day and begin the unboxing. Ah, the fragrance of newly opened cardboard boxes. Today's generation is going to remember that scent the same way I remember the smell of my mom's fresh-baked cookies. It was all there, the technology that was going to make me a better, more productive human being, turning the world into a better place.

I unpack the tablet with mixed feelings. I've reached that age where I am not too old to use the latest technology, but I've passed the age where it’s “intuitive.” What I am trying to say is that I am pretty sure there is going to be some table banging when I try to set up this thing. The first step was to synchronize it with some account I thought I didn't have, so I tried to create one. In doing so, I learned my account already existed, but I had forgotten the password. In my attempt to retrieve the password, the password reset email was sent to an account that required two-factor authentication. This time around, the code was sent to a phone number I hadn't used for years, so I was locked out. What does it say about me that authentication is such a struggle? I think I’m taking that question to therapy next week.

Screw it. After half an hour of being told I am not who I am, I create a new me, and with a new account, I manage to get everything working, more or less. All said and done, setting up the tablet wasn’t all that bad. In the end, I even felt a form of retroactive empathy for my father—empathy for my father rarely happens. When I was a kid, he'd shout for me to go downstairs and help him with something on the computer because he couldn’t figure it out, and if I couldn’t figure it out, something or someone got banged.

So here I am, sitting in a cafe, sipping my latte, surrounded by all the laptopped digital nomads who preferred “flexible” work instead of being able to afford rent for an apartment big enough to fit a desk. Why deal with all that hassle? To write whatever this is on a tablet instead of sitting on my couch with a pen and a notebook? Technology isn’t a way out of our problems. It’s just another product. Another way for someone to take what’s yours: your money, your time, your sanity. Instead of solving world hunger, plant domestication, the mother of all technologies, turned out to be another way for the stronger to get fat by getting the weaker to work, supposedly for their own benefit. It’s always been like that, from the creators of civilization in Mesopotamia to the code-bros in Silicon Valley. Nothing’s changed. But man, this place makes a killer latte.