Who's the Orangutan Now?

I've quoted the line, "Orangutans are suspicious of changes in their cages" from Paul Simon's At the Zoo a lot during my lifetime. Usually it's about someone who is fighting an inevitable and benevolent change.

But now I'm starting to use it to describe my own feelings about change.

When I was growing up, new ideas and products were always  better. "New and Improved" was slapped on the front of nearly everything in the grocery store. I thought the original stuff must have really sucked if it left so much room for improvement.

By inclination, I've always been a fan of change, even just to break the monotony. But as I look back at the time when I got serious about being a grownup - around age 30 - I've started questioning how many things we've changed really deserve the label "New and Improved."

Before deregulation, flying was expensive, but even the cheapest seats gave passengers enough knee room to be comfortable, and flight attendants served real food to all of the passengers for free. What's more, you could show up at the airport ten minutes before flight time, run to the gate and get on board your plane without having someone tackle you and check what you're packing in your undies.

In those pre-personal computer days I never had problems staying organized because I had an assistant who answered my phone, typed and proofread my letters and kept the files organized.

It was easier to keep equipment up to date because nothing doubled in speed or capacity every 18 to 24 months.

Food and drink were evolving, but still simpler: There were two kinds of wine: Red and white. You ordered red with beef, white with everything else. (There was also pink for those who were having a seafood appetizer and steak for an entree.)

The political atmosphere was comfortably similar to professional wrestling. Plenty of posturing and demagoguery at show time,  but after hours politicians on opposite sides of the aisle kicked back, and drank whiskey together while they figured out how to divvy up the tax dollars.

When a scandal or problem was reported in the newspapers or on television, most people were inclined to attack the problem rather than the people who discovered it.

And nut cases that called for the armed overthrow of the government were not called patriots.

Communications have been revolutionized. Mailed, handwritten letters have become vestigial relics of a past millennium.

Five years ago I first got an inkling of the sheer breadth of the change when I realized that day in-and-day out  my local assistant was carrying on a running cell phone text message conversation with her boyfriend. He was in New York, we were in a village in Eurasia, sharing the road with horse carts and wagons pulled by oxen.
I think that was when I realized I had fallen a step behind the technological curve, and started to question how badly I wanted to keep up.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in turning back the clock. I love digital picture frames, paying my bills online, the clock that sets itself and projects the time and outside temperature on the ceiling of the bedroom, this year's flu vaccine and the little blue light I shine on my face early in the morning to keep me from getting suicidal.

However, I have never Twittered or signed up for MySpace. I enjoy  Facebook - but I worry that 25 word epigrams and "Likes" have decimated thoughtful email exchanges and even family phone calls.

And some technology just seems excessive. Fifteen years ago I bought a network file server with the largest hard drive I could afford. It held  financial and contributor databases for more than 50 political campaigns and had room for more. Last week I saw an advertisement for a portable hard drive with 2 million times as much storage capacity. Price? $98.

I sort of wanted to buy one, but - for the life of me - I could not think of what I would do with two thousand-billion bytes of storage space, except lose track of things.

I am profoundly amazed that not only do I not own an iPad, I can't think of anything I'd do with one that I can't do better on my laptop. Perhaps there's an app for that.

So as society continues to rock, roll and lurch forward, I have found myself settling into my age-appropriate role as ballast, questioning the new wisdom and hanging on to a few anachronisms.

After recent airplane/airport experiences I've decided that - unless there's absolutely no option - I will never fly again. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think anybody should grope my junk without at least springing for dinner and a movie.

Truth be known, I'd love to have a Kindle, but I'd feel like I was slapping the face of the nice woman who smiles at me every weekend when I walk into her bookstore.

I know that someday I'll own a small device that takes care of all of my communication, data and entertainment needs. I don't know what it will look like or how it will work, but I do know that I will purchase version 2.1 of the device at a year-end clearance sale.

Hello. My name is Stan M, and I am an orangutan.