This guy was no exception. What I thought was particularly interesting about him is that he is not an engineer by education. The two degrees he’s earned could not be less technical. He’s also set up and volunteered for a couple of non-profits that extend technical capabilities to those who would not be able to afford them otherwise, not to show them the wonders of Facebook or Netflix but in an admirable attempt (I think) to even the playing field for people who are looking for a job. He “picked up coding” along the way, he told me. I cannot even imagine.
He shared an interesting story about a motorcycle accident, and how, for him, the ability to remain connected regardless of location became, one afternoon, a matter of life or death. And then we started talking about phones. He was used to being able to see the person he’s talking to, he said, so it was odd that he couldn’t see me. And it was equally strange that our discussion wasn’t integrated with one thing and another – documents? profiles? preferences? I have no idea. That led to the discussion of the smart phones. You start a new job, he explained, and your new employer hands you a smart phone on your first day because everyone knows how to use one. So I asked him, naturally, about what happens when someone doesn’t. I did not identify myself as the someone. He paused for a moment and then said, “I feel badly for them. I feel sorry for them. They’re sad.”
I got together recently with a woman I met at the coffee shop a few blocks from my house. Like many coffee shops on the east side of Portland, it is typically as unfriendly as it is connected, which is to say quite. So imagine my surprise when a complete stranger struck up a conversation with me because she’d noticed that I was reading a book that she’d once read as well. A few months passed, a few e-mails were exchanged, and on Saturday we were sitting down there talking about many things, including smart phones. She told me that her phone is not particularly smart, and that since it wasn’t designed with the structure of the human face in mind, she pulls it back and forth between her ear and her mouth. It what has come to feel like a confession, I acknowledged that I do not own one, and that I do not want to own one.
We also talked about Motown music, which she loves and which I love as well, and I told her that I am completely unable to articulate what it is exactly that I love about it, and she told me a little story. Growing up in New Jersey, she told me that on nights when it was snowing, if she sat in a certain spot in her bedroom and held her little radio at just the right angle, the signals came all the way from Detroit and brought the music with them. I know it’s a bad idea to mix and match conversations that happen in different spheres for very different purposes, particularly when one of those spheres involves earning a living, and I know it’s pointless to compare the magic of 1960s radio on snowy evenings to the wonders of being connected to the entire world by a plastic contraption smaller than a walky-talky, but I did it anyhow.
