O Grave New World
That has such men and women in't
I’ve been on a honey-do bender this past week. Mrs. FarSide ordered up a service where a guy comes to your house, sets up an IV pole, and proceeds to pump vitamins in one arm while sucking blood out of the other to tell you how healthy you are without the danger of going near a certified doctor.
Suits me just fine.
In any case, I’ve been cursed with a sudden burst of energy and the missus has been cursed with a sudden list of things for me to use it on.
One of the projects has been to set up a smart home. Turns out my home is a hell of a lot smarter than I am. I’ve been pulling out great gobs of my hair over programming light bulbs. Hoodathunk something as simple as a light bulb could be so freaggin complex?
Since we’re getting old, we can’t possibly remember to turn the porch light on and off at sundown and sunrise, so my son told the missus about smart home devices and next thing I know, it’s become my job. So I bought a truck-load of these BARDI wifi-enabled bulbs for the city house and the FarSide World Headquarters up the hill. Then I made the mistake of downloading the app.
Now keep in mind that our ceilings are 10 feet high. It’s an Indonesian thing, since no one has central A/C here, and hot air rises. You know… So I have a telescoping pole with a gripper on the end, and I have to climb a step-stool to extend the pole to reach the bulbs.
Now I’m nearly blind, so getting the bulbs out is not to hard—I just wave the pole around till I hit the bulb. Getting the new one in is a whole different level of frustration. The missus is up the ladder behind me giving directions in Englishesian, while I wave the thing around trying to connect with the socket.
Anyway, two bulbs, an hour and a half, and my entire repertoire of cuss words later, I managed. If anyone asks you how many Indonesians it takes to change a light bulb, tell them you have on good authority it takes two.
Then came the fun part.
First, I had to link the app to the wifi. I’m quite tech savvy, but this is Chinese technology, and apparently folks over there have lots of time to scrolls though menus and variables looking for the right combination.
Next I had to cycle the wall switch a couple of times until the bulb started blinking rapidly—not slowly, that’s a different setting. Then I had to whip out my phone, connect the bulb to the app, and assign it to the proper room for scheduling before the full 5 seconds allowed had elapsed. By now, I have murder in my eyes and the little dweeb that invented this crap better hope I never find him.
At this point, I was making up my own cuss words by combining German, Spanish, Indonesian, and Texian expletives. German and Indonesian cuss words are the best. They sound nasty. Spanish cuss words make you want to thank someone for the compliment.
By the end of Day 1, I had installed and linked all the bulbs, but I hadn’t quite got the scheduling right. Fortunately no one in the neighborhood knows Morse code, since the porch light was signalling SOS every 10 minutes.
Day 2 saw the system coming together. Summoning all my programming powers, I was able to correctly schedule all the lights to come on and go off when I wanted them to, but little did I know that the missus had turned off the wall switch. Come 5:30, as the sun slid down to the horizon, I stood breathlessly awaiting the glorious moment when my brilliance would shine…and nothing happened.
I panicked and checked and rechecked all the settings and saw nothing wrong. Then the missus flipped the switch again and the bulb blazed forth in glorious LED light. The porch glowed like Christmas at the mall. In fact, I felt a lot like Chevy Chase in that National Lampoon movie.
Unbeknownst to me, Mrs. FarSide was so thrilled to see me absorbed in a honey-do project that she started scrolling through the BARDI catalog of nightmares—keyless door locks, automatic curtain opener/closers, wifi triggered wall sockets. Next thing I know, she’s fantasizing about a home that automatically turns on lights when you enter the room or when we’re away.
It was at this point that I texted my son and threatened his life.
I can only imagine that our house radiates like a nuclear reactor in certain electro-magnetic spectra. Is it really an improvement to have so much automation? The world seems hellbent on having machines do everything for us to the point where we will no longer be able to do anything for ourselves.
I freely admit to being a tech-head. I’ve been a button-pusher since I was able to lift my arm and direct my fingers. I was tearing apart the family gizmos and building rudimentary computers in the early 70s, when normal kids were building forts and having dirt clod wars.
But at some point we have to pause and ask ourselves if the head-long rush into robotics and automation is really worth all these gadgets everywhere. Granted, it’s the kind of stuff that was mind-blowing sci-fi when I was a kid—video calls anywhere in the world, rooms that react to your presence, agents that zip around the net doing errands for you, humanoid robots ironing and folding the laundry.
It used to be that my only motive for getting out of bed in the morning was, well, the coffee wasn’t going to make itself, was it? Now it does, and if I have an automtron to prepare it to my exacting specifications and fetch it to my bedside, I frankly have no reason at all to stand up.
In a couple of years, we’ll have a world full of gelatinous blobs perched in armchairs playing games or mindlessly absorbing “content”. Somehow I just don’t see humanity going the way of Star Trek with everyone seeking enlightenment while engaging in creative hobbies. Survival is what kicks us in the butt every morning—and a great cup of Sumatera arabica beans, of course. Without that, will humans actually go in search of fulfillment, or will they simply merge with the furniture while machines carry on the daily chores?
In any case, I can’t wait for the mass-produced robots to come on the market. I’ll be first in line to get one that can install and program all this “smart” home crap.
Si mundus vult dicipi, ergo dicipitatur.
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Today’s cinematic companions are a trip back in time to see the future of our present. The first offering is a classic: Modern Times (1936), an absolute must-see written, directed and starring the amazing Charlie Chaplin. Moving half a century ahead, we find this obscure and eccentric flick, called Electric Dreams (1984), with Virginia Madsen the only name you may recognize. An oddly satirical precursor to Her (2013).
Automatically automating the automatrons on the Far Side:
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Smart home? You're joking, right?
My deepest sympathies Mr. Fareside. Putting yourself through all that so I won't have to--not that there is much chance of that technology ever finding it's way to my place. Cussing in four languages sounds like something that would definitely broaden my horizons though.