One of the readers of the editorialog raised an interesting question that I thought deserved sharing. I’m not sure how old the individual is, but the question certainly resonates with me.

Q #1
Why are things getting harder to open, especially because we have been promised that with all our technology life is supposed to be getting easier?

I find the packages of light bulbs or equipment or even nuts and bolts are becoming almost impossible to open without the aid of a ray gun or a jackhammer. And, of course, if I do open it and the item doesn’t work, I often find that the store is reluctant to refund me my full purchase because, of course, they can’t put it back in the package and thus can’t put it back on the shelves. The cost for this problem ultimately ends up in the price we pay. So not only is the item not easier to open, it is not cheaper than the original approach where we bought things unpackaged.

And it isn’t just items that we are buying that have complicated opening processes. I just upgraded my stereo/tv/dvd/blueray system. Most of the small parts came in the above-noted packages that thankfully the technician was able to open (but he had a cutting device I’m sure he found at some abandoned meat cleaver factory). But the real difficulties came when we started up the system. It only had one new part different from the system that I had at the condo; but this part requires a second clicker. More importantly, this clicker can interact (at some times weird moments) with the major clicker that the telecommunications company gave me to run the original system. Seems simple enough but just push one wrong button and the entire system goes into a catatonic state and refuses to open in anything other than screens of gibberish. Shut it down, try to re-boot and guess what — the previous screen of gibberish pops back up. How is all this simpler? I just want to get back to square one and get the proper channel up on the screen. I do not want to communicate with some island in the South China Sea; I do not want to view four hundred lines of “I told you so”; I do not want to opt for a free trip to the Grand Cayman Islands in a canoe — I just want my tv to open to the channel I desire.

And what about the new rental cars with all their connectivity. I own two fairly sophisticated automobiles — an SUV and a car with a top that will disappear into the trunk. My phones automatically pair up when I put my key into the ignition. And I can listen to the same station on the satellite radio from coast to coast, should I wish. But give me a cheap, middle of the road, rental car and try to get its phone system to work, or the speedometer to show up in anything other than bar graphs suggesting the Dow is plunging towards 1929, or how the gas cap opens and I can sit at the side of the road outside any airport for fifteen minutes pushing buttons, re-setting everything from the temperature in Halifax to the fuel economy on the Rogers’ Pass but never getting the odometer back to zero for either Trip A or Trip B or finding a radio station other than a 24 hour advertising mega-blather. I long for the good ole days when a rental car had a normal key, with a normal push-button radio and a gas cap that you simply unscrewed and placed on the trunk.

Nothing opens easily any more. I really pity my grandkids when they get autonomous cars that malfunction once they are inside and the door locks won’t open and the gps keeps taking them to the Opera Hall when they want to go to the hockey arena — not to mention the sound system gives them the previous driver’s selection of hip-hop artists rather than their own usb stick full of Tim McGraw. Perhaps this will be the undoing of the leader of the soon to be great country — he’ll be given a pass card to the White House that will only open the door to Rose Garden and once through the door, the card resets and won’t let him leave. The only way that it will open again, is if someone tweets in perfect harmony the opening song from LaLaLand…

I’d write more, but I have to open my brief case ’cause I found a new bottle of scotch today and I’d like a sip…if I could only remember the new password I was given for the month of February to get the security cover on the brief case to release…

g.w.