My employer was kind enough to provide me with an iPad – something I hadn’t exactly drooled over, but had been mighty curious about. (I’d probably have gotten an Android tablet if it were my dollars, since they are tight in the situation of my wife’s unemployment, but even that wasn’t an option, so I’m very grateful).
As I count it, that means I have eight screens I deal with regularly – my smartphone, an HTC Inspire that I still feel closest to, literally, the iPad, my year-old trusty fun Nook Tablet, my home and work PCs, my still-neat Toshiba Netbook , our living room TV and my upstairs home-office TV – oh, and add the 4 TVs on the newsroom wall and we’re up to 12 (though I’m usually more zoned into my work PC there than any of the various channels we tune in at various times – except ours of course;-)
So in this World of Doing More with Less, just how thin can one spread one’s self, screen-wise?
I have to admit, the iPad is one smooth gadget – to use the phrase I prefer to appliance, or even tablet. Gadget is closer to toy, as in fun, and unless I can see that the Website’s content management system really can work on it — so far, I doubt it – it’s more like my phone with a bigger screen, or my PC with a smaller one and no keyboard except the one that has no tactile feedback, something I’ve grown accustomed to.
But it sure feels like a smooth-running high-end device, not the bushel of compromises some other gadgets or toys or tools of my past have felt like. I get why Apple has its ‘walled garden’ – to control quality (and make many dollars in the process) — in nearly 30 years of owning a PC, when asked why I didn’t have anything Apple, I usually said something on the order of, “If I were rich enough I’d have both.” And I would have, if only to, as they say in college, “compare and contrast,” and use each for its strengths.
But technology is a friend that has tested so many friends’ patience of late. Big “upgrades” at the station lately, and for months that has meant a high-wire act for those far more responsible than I am for getting the shows on the air each night. Things work, except when they don’t. We miss features or work flows (or shortcuts) we had and wonder why some new ones exist.
These days, every upgrade, however well-intentioned, feels like 2 steps forward, 3 steps back, 2 steps sideways and twirl until you’re dizzy (or read the manual, or visit the support forum). Know what I mean?
There are those who’d say we’re just resistant to change. I say the world is getting very tired of upgrades that mess with our well-established work paths and habits, and take away or mess up features we depend on in order to add gee-whiz things we never said we wanted.
It often feels like in this Doing More with Less World, everyone is a beta tester, and everyone is a proofreader (magazines and books with typos? Because most likely of fewer editors tasked with doing more — tweet this, Facebook that and proofread this article! — in a shorter period of time. Something has to give, and quite often, alas, it’s a feeling of quality. Every typo – and I make my share, for sure – is a little pebble in the shoe of a reader, a sign that we’re all Doing More with Less and suffering in the end for it.
So as I deck out my new iPad with the right bookmarks (Safari’s not bad!) and apps (free of course, mostly news of course), I definitely feel I’ve reached my Screen Limit. I often have to fight The Vortex, as my wife and I have called my all-consuming job, to stop doing it one place (home or work) so I can take a break before doing some more of it (at work or home).
This year is Deb and my 30th anniversary (she’s put up with me for that long? Is there a Nobel Prize for that?) and while we dream of Hawaii, we will make it to the coast, or to visit some relatives. And yes, 2-3 of those screens will come along, but I will be more relaxed, not less, knowing I can check in when I want to. And then put it away. Deb’s orders.
Some things never change. Decades ago, Deb waited for me to do “one more thing” after “one more thing” at the UPI bureau in Portland so we could head home. But at home – before cell phones (and long before we gave up our land line) – I still was able to turn off work for the most part. Now, there’s always more to do. Always.
Some things never change. I hope I can, just enough to make it to 40 years (or gasp, 50!) with the woman I love.
That’s one reason I call them toys, or gadgets. To put them in their rightful place, at least for the moment – as servants, not masters of my hours and days and life.
Call it a rationalization. We all have them, to get by and stave off insanity, depression etc.
Screening the world on so many screens can screen out life. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
Happy 2013, everybody!
Leave it to Barney 