There’s usually one in every crowd; you probably know one. They’re always showing off the latest gadget, be it a car, a watch, a radio, or nowadays, a computer.
Whatever it is, they’ve got it first. I speak of the “early adopters.”
It’s one of many ways that are not for me.
If they are the leading edge of technology, I am the trailing edge. I only got a Facebook page so I could see what my kids were up to (and then they refused to “friend” me, so I still don’t know). I sometimes think I was the last person in America to get a cell phone, and until last week, I still didn’t get e-mail.
Ah, happy days! I actually used to spend my time in doctor’s waiting rooms catching up on magazine articles. Now I cringe every time I hear the little bell that signals more electronic junk mail to delete.
I don’t get it about early adopters – do they think they’re smarter than the rest of us? Because sometimes, I think it’s the opposite.
Often, all it means is they threw away disposable income on something that might not even work. Even when it does, there can be problems. Think about the first guy to buy a video phone – who would he call?
Or maybe they count on being “cool.” But I’ll still bet that, someday, their children won’t “friend” them, either.
And there is a real downside risk to doing things first: sometimes you get stuck with a loser. Remember BetaMax? The format that lost out to VHS?
It’s bad enough if all you have to do is buy all six Star Wars movies again. But what if all your children’s first steps, first holidays, and wacky antics, are locked away in a format so dead that nobody has the key, any more, not even you? What are you going to do – stage family reunions at the National Archives?
Maybe I’m not “cool” or “fun,” but I’ll admit it doesn’t hurt my budget if I refuse to chase after every shiny new gadget to come down the pike. Sometimes I’m very glad that I never sank $5,000 into a plasma TV.
But mostly, there’s an element of caution involved. Where would we be, as a species, if we all ate every new mushroom to spring up outside our cave? Or gobbled down every red berry?
I like to think I would have held back at least long enough to notice that the people who ate the berries off the yew tree, yesterday, were the same ones stretched out dead on the cave floor, this morning. Only fools rush in, etcetera.
That’s why my biggest complaint with the rush to new technology is that nowadays, prudence and caution are not being rewarded, but punished.
For example: for years, I resisted buying a microwave. Partly I wasn’t doing much cooking, but also – who needs it? Until the box for my dinner said “Cook in microwave for 5 minutes, or in a 350 degree oven for 65 minutes.” 65 minutes? In August? Why not just say, “If you don’t own a microwave oven, we don’t want your money”?
As for a cell-phone – I didn’t see the need for one until I was in a fender-bender, driving out to Hauppauge to meet my husband for dinner. I looked around for a pay phone booth, so I could call and tell him I’d be late. I finally spotted one across a dingy parking lot, and hiked over to it 0 only to find that the receiver had been ripped right out.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t seen a working pay phone in …well, years. So I had to get a cell phone. And now, I have to read a torrent of email and spam on it, when all I want is to see if my child’s principal has answered my email. It feels like trying to drink from a fire hose. But it doesn’t feel like progress!
My husband’s grandmother told a story about one year when she was canning peaches, or “putting them up” in glass Mason jars. There’s a certain way you have to do it, or botulism sets in.
At the end of the day, everyone was enjoying Peach Melba sundaes, except the woman Grandma had hired as kitchen help. “Why don’t you join us, and have some?” Grandma asked.
“Oh, I will,” the lady replied. “Tomorrow. When I see you’ve lived.”
She had the soul of a “late adopter.”
