ON MY MIND
Time keeps on ticking By Paul Kandarian
I just can’t keep up. I know I’m old, I’m slow, I’m so far behind the times that “behind the times” in the dictionary has my photo next to it. But I try, lordie, I try. CASE IN POINT. I got a watch for Christmas that isn’t just a watch—it’s basically a hospital emergency room you strap to your wrist that measures… everything. It’s a MorePro, which I think is like a FitBit, which I think is like an Apple Watch, with none of them, not one, actually resembling an actual watch in style or function. I have a watch. A regular watch. With a dial, and hands that move, and a date that you have to set. The latter function is light years ahead of any watch I had back in the day. Back then, to remind yourself what day it was, you had a thing known as a “calendar.” Then again, phones aren’t really phones anymore, at least not just being something that makes calls, because now their functions include monitoring your health from that thing that’s not really a watch on your wrist. And health benefits? Ha! I just read this about FitBit, which is owned by Google, which in terms of Orwellian Big Brother snooping is way ahead of anything dreamed up in 1984, that says these activity trackers (polite speak for “wrist spies”) measure stuff like blood pressure, sleep, steps, heartbeat, sperm count, and IQ (maybe not yet, but trust me, it will someday), and other stuff that, the article said, provide “little evidence they improve health outcomes.” Well, that’s reassuring. The only outcome they indisputably improve is the fiscal health of Google, Apple, and anyone making these trendy things pretending to be a watch.
So I got this MorePro thing for Christmas and did with it what I always do with confusing gifts or those too ugly to wear: ditched it in a bag and forgot about it. Mind you, this thing isn’t ugly, in fact it’s sleek and pretty. I just couldn’t figure out how it works. Still can’t. My lady was kind enough to gift it to me, and after a few months of asking where it was and me ignoring her the way I do when she asks me to do something around the house that involves tools, I dug it out, charged it, looked at the tiny manual, and just stared at it for hours. Maybe it’s me. I know I’m tech-impaired as an older American whose most complicated technology in his youth was installing batteries the right way which, coincidentally, is still a crapshoot with me. But why can’t they just keep things simple? This little manual (I say “manual” like it is one but it’s actually a tiny folded piece of paper with words and diagrams they dipped in confusion and stuck into the box) shows how to put the wristband on and charge it and that much I got. How confusing is the confusion? Check out this little instructional ditty: “Responsibility limit: Following by law, under any circumstances, device supplier takes the largest responsibility limit of your loss for using the device (except for the bodily harm and the excluding harm in law instruction), which is referring to the paid cost of the device.”
So I got this MorePro thing for Christmas and did with it what I always do with confusing gifts or those too ugly to wear: ditched it in a bag and forgot about it.
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April 2020 | The South Coast Insider
