I'm just here to enter the password.

I’ll admit to being a victim of the electronic culture.  Today is September 23, it’s a sunny day, the temperature is 77°, the relative humidity is less than 35% and there is no wind.  In other words, it’s a perfect pre-fall day.  To make it even better, it’s Sunday – so I can experience the weather instead of watching it from inside my office.

However, I find myself on the porch neck deep in technology. 

Let’s start from the beginning.  Our home is occupied by 3 people and a cat.   We have 4 computers, 3 iPhones and 2 iPads.  That’s 9 pieces of technology that all do essentially the same thing, yup – we are wired!

This past week, my friends at Apple announced the iPhone 5 and the world lined up.  50% of those who did not line up wanted to, but could not get the day off.  The purpose of getting in line was to pay Apple to replace a perfectly good, no, make that a perfectly excellent, phone with the newest technology that could run faster, jump higher and provide more happiness than you can imagine.  Those of us who have full time serious jobs watched everyone else get in line first and score a new iPhone 5, while we insincerely muttered, “it’s just a phone.”

The boys at Apple know that some of their customers actually work and may lose their enthusiasm for replacing new for newer, while waiting for the second boatload of product to arrive from China.  So, to keep my adrenaline at peak capacity, Apple offered to give me (and everyone else on the planet not receiving a paycheck from Google or Samsung) the new operating system (iOS 6) to load on my current (pronounced “OLD!!!!”) iPhone, free. 

Just so we are clear, iOS6 is designed to come with iPhone 5 which is two model iterations past the iPhone 4.  Once iOS6 is loaded I will have, depending on which iteration of the iPhone I own, some, most or none of the features of iPhone 5.  However, if my current iPhone is more than 30-seconds old, it won’t have all the features, especially the speed…..  which is 3 nanoseconds faster than a blur and 100,000 nanoseconds faster than my ability to perceive it.  I know this is confusing and that's probably why half the population on the planet lines up.  What's 8 to 36 hours in line plus $300 compared to the headache caused by the mental gymnastics of figuring out what you didn't get because you took the free software instead of paying for the new hardware?

I love to get something free (even when it’s not), so I downloaded the latest operating system for my iPhone last week.  What makes today special is that I now have to download it for Donna. 

Those of you old enough to remember new technology, like the 8-Track tape player or 5 ¼” floppy discs will understand what I’m about to describe.  (If you’re under 28 years old you quit listening to Siri read this to you10 minutes ago.)  Back when I was a boy, updating software required several hours staring at a cathode ray tube while swapping out dozens of 5 1/4” floppies in specific sequence.  Every so often the PC would hiccup and you got on a phone with someone at the “help” desk who would walk you through why you were wasting a day getting something newer that you didn’t need when you could be out on the porch. By the way, that person was located in the good ole US of A.

Armed with Donna’s laptop, iPad, iPhone 4 (not to be mistaken with the 4S, which is really the iPhone 5 disguised as a 4), and a tall glass of iced tea, I headed for the porch.  Picture me in my zero gravity La Fuma lounge chair with Donna’s iPad and iPhone downloading the latest software from somewhere out in the “ethersphere” while her laptop is gulping down iTunes 10.7699937443A. 

While sipping my tea, I realize… I’m not really doing anything!

So, why am I here? 

(I’m not asking the meaning of life, Siri already told me.  I’m asking what my role is in the process of updating the software.)

Then it dawns on me, I’m here to type in the password.  Personal technology has not yet evolved to a point where it can agree to help itself.

As the process continues, I will also have to “agree” to the terms and conditions of my using my new software.  This may be the most important thing that I do….  The folks at Apple display an on-line document roughly the size of the federal health care law, and remarkably more forthright, that’s too long for me to read in two lifetimes.  They require me to agree to the content of the document before I can access the special gift of something I really don’t need.  In the recesses of my mind, I can hear Nancy Pelosi in the background cooing “you have to pass it in order to see what’s in it.”  I can see that diabolical grin on her face as she convinces150+ supposedly rational lawyers to play what amounts to political Russian roulette, knowing that all 6 chambers are loaded.  Yeah, I know – I digress.

How I long for the days when I had less technology and it was more painful to use.