I’m sure there are lots of people my age who are perfectly in tune with the 21st century. But I’m not one of them.

It’s the new technologies that done laid me to waste, advancing light years in mere decades and leaving me in the dust. Luckily, I don’t need most of it, so I don’t have it. Take everyone’s fifth appendage — the cellphone. I have a flip phone; it sleeps in my glove compartment, waiting for an emergency call. I have a landline, so if someone calls, I get the message when I get home. Otherwise, if I miss their call when they make it, so what? How many calls have any of us gotten that were so vital they had to be answered immediately? One? Two? Three? None? I don’t know, of course, but I’d bet an honest answer is a lot closer to none than to three.

But that was in The Good Ole Days. Today, peeps act like their constant cellphone use is the only thing keeping extraterrestrial invasion at bay, hustling more messages individually than Western Union did in its lifetime. Just FYI, the average number of texts received and sent per day is around 50, to the tune of 1500 a month.

And to me, there’s a wonderful irony about all this: The word “phone” comes from the Greek word for “sound” or “voice,” but almost no one except hopeless losers like me actually TALKS on the phone anymore. I mean, why hear your friends’ unique way of phrasing and feelings and develop actual speech, when you can get some 10-word cliche (with or without some moronic meme, LOL).

Ultimately, what bugs me is that while all this cyber-communication keeps people constantly connected, at the same time, it depersonalizes relationships. What we have is constant communication, with almost no meaningful content. In short, it’s endless chattering, with no chatting.

And beyond all that, even though communication by our different mediums is instantaneous, the odds of getting a live answer from a person or even getting in direct touch with them, are about the same as winning the Irish Sweepstakes. The Cosmic Kid is a perfect example.

–

Contacts without connections

–

I’m proud to call The Kid a friend. He’s 27, smart as a whip, skilled in a bunch of realms and a lot of fun. He’s also a one-man, highly successful web designer and he did it all on his own — no trust fund baby, is he. But to my way of thinking, he’s so successful that he’s TOO successful for his own good.

Basically, he works almost all the time. He has two phone numbers and two email addresses, but he’s so busy texting and emailing that he can never catch up. His weekends are more jammed up than his weekdays because that’s the only time his clients (similarly cyber-swamped) can detach from THEIR clients and do business with him.

The last time I saw him, I busted on him that I’d sent two emails and had left two phone messages in the previous week and hadn’t gotten Word One back from him. He shrugged apologetically. Then he said, “Yeah, by the time I return my personal emails, we could’ve done it with snail mail.”

Ah yes, snail mail: When people wrote letters, they actually SAID things. OK, not profound or noteworthy things, perhaps, but things nonetheless. And they did it in more than a line or two. If you remember writing letters, back in the Stone Age, you’ll also remember carrying them around for a while, rereading them and feeling emotionally connected to the writer. If anyone starts to feel connected to today’s texts, they’d best seek competent counseling — immediately.

–

Pickin’ and choosin’

–

But don’t think I’m a technophobe. I’m not. Nor am I a Neo-Luddite. Believe me, I don’t wanna live in a yurt, wash my clothes in the crick or try to read by oil lamp. I appreciate the technologies that have truly enhanced our lives. Take cars, for example. I love the look of the classic cars. Whenever I look at a pic of a ’52 Buick Roadmaster, I about break into tears over Beauty Long Since Gone.

At the same time, I realize how unsafe, inefficient and uneconomical the old cars were. And ditto for the ’60s cars, and most of the ’70s cars as well. If you had a Roadmaster today, aside from having to either take out a second mortgage or sell your firstborn into slavery to pay for the gas, it’d be in the shop a lot more than any model of a contemporary car.

This doesn’t mean I like the LOOKS of today’s cars. I don’t really dislike them either, because, frankly, they HAVE no looks — at least not enough to distinguish one from another. Today’s Cadillacs are as innocuous as an ’80s Trabant; SUVs have size … but no substance.

And it’s the same with almost everything else. Watches used to be treasured heirlooms, things of beauty passed down from one generation to the next. Lamp posts had all kinds of lovely designs on them. Toasters were as chromed up as Chrysler Imperials. The lowly pen was attractive (and not at all disposable). Even our coins were OBJECTS D’ART.

But no more. Lines are straight. Colors are bland. Efficiency rules; beauty takes a hike.

Ultimately, I have one consolation: I was around to witness America’s unhinged, out of control, impassioned love affair with all those old-school, inefficient, overdesigned, if not Rococo, things and I’m here now, in The Land of the Insipid, to mourn their loss. There is, I think, something to be said for bearing witness to a cultural life cycle, replete with all its ups and downs, joys and pains.

Besides, while I might accept the contemporary aesthetic (or lack thereof), I sure don’t have to surrender to it.