A modern iMac in front of a 1980s IBM computer and a typewriter.
As a rule, I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. What bothers me about them is that they have the feeling of fleeting desperation. You feel like you ate too much over the holidays, so you resolve to lose weight and so you sign up for a gym membership, which you use religiously for two weeks in January, and then you keep paying the monthly fee with the vague idea of returning, which you never do. Fortunes have been built upon this.
But this year I am making one resolution: I will stop being the stereotypical old guy, complaining that he can't figure out how to get Netflix to work on his iPad — and related frustrations of a generational variety.
As regards tech, I'm determined to appreciate it more. I mean you have to stop and just take it in now and then. Consider that I'm writing this on a computer far more powerful than what NASA used to get men to the moon and back. On this same device, I can not only write and have my work instantly checked for grammar and spelling, but also research any question with information provided by, in some cases, thousands of sources (many of them accurate!). And I can communicate with people all over the world, check the weather forecast and the stock market and do countless other tasks. While I'm at it I can simply tell Alexa to play whatever music I'm in the mood for. She can also update my grocery list.
Now, if you're a young person — say, under 40 — none of this would seem extraordinary to you. It's just the way it's always been. But, me? I typed my term papers on a portable typewriter. I actually know what white out was. When the IBM Selectric came out in my early career I thought it was a revolution. When the legislative office I worked in got its first IBM personal computer in 1984 I spent long evenings with the "documentation," figuring out how to get the dBase list of constituents to mesh with a letter written in Word.
My point is that all this tech stuff is wonderful and even awe-inspiring. That's despite the dark corners of the internet that can inspire hatred and violence, despite the fracturing of information sources that allow people to pick their own facts and despite some of the disturbing implications of artificial intelligence. We tend to focus on the awful stuff and I suppose that’s appropriate enough. But, as a result, we end up taking the amazingly good stuff for granted. I resolve this year to do the opposite.
Specifically, I promise to:
Stop whining about forgotten passwords. These are there for my security. I keep a list in a notebook. Is it really that big a deal to get up from my chair, find the notebook, and enter the proper password? No, it is not. And if I've forgotten to update the password in my notebook, whose fault is that?
Stop whining about all the channels, streaming and what nots. Oddly, my wife, Dianne, claims she's tired of hearing me go on about how there used to be only three channels (nobody counted "educational television") and you had to watch what was on when it was on. Now there's probably a million channels (nobody knows how many there are) and you can watch anything anytime, which confuses and frustrates us. Despite my being 100% right about this, I will acknowledge that Dianne has a point when she claims that repetition does not make me even more right. I resolve to appreciate our wide variety of choices, not moan about having to get up and switch to the Fire TV Stick so we can watch Netflix. (Although, you know, Dianne could take on this responsibility once in a while. Why do I always have to do it?)
Stop whining about the occasional (usually self-imposed) glitch and just fix the damn thing. I own a Mac. So the prescribed solution to most every problem is to turn it off and turn it back on. But when you do this it takes a couple minutes to reboot and then you have to close all these annoying windows that pop up. No, I do not want to set up Dropbox now! I don’t even know what the heck Dropbox is! Also, my selected screen saver picture of a lovely Madison or Northwoods scene gets replaced by some picture of the redwoods or a Napa Valley vineyard, which I take to be in-your-face Cali-normativeness. I actually get upset about this. I resolve to now simply go about the task of replacing California with some nice photo from Wisconsin or Michigan and get back to work. It’s possible I’ll even agree to set up Dropbox.
So there you have it. Are my resolutions brave? Of course they are. Laudable? As laudable as they come. Worthy of praise and admiration from young people? Bring it on. Sustainable? Did I mention how laudable all this is?
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos, where a version of this piece originally appeared.
