I remember the day I received my first mobile communications kit—it was my first day at the Department of Justice, and the sheer technological gravity of the moment was palpable. I was officially issued a cell phone and, for maximum redundancy, a beeper. A stern-faced security officer explained, with the intensity usually reserved for nuclear launch codes, that I was “on call” for twenty-four hours, and therefore required to be in constant, digital congress with the “Justice Command Center.” I would later learn that he wasn’t joking.
The phone itself? I have no recollection of the brand or model. I just remember it looked like a small brick that felt specifically designed to humiliate my offensive-lineman-sized fingers. Typing a single number was less a matter of dialing and more a delicate game of pressing three buttons simultaneously, followed by a silent prayer that I hadn’t accidentally called the Kremlin.
Fast-forward over thirty glorious years, and that tiny computer is no longer a luxury for a naive government lawyer; it is the digital ankle monitor of modern life. My transition from a Senate confirmed position to a digital serf was brutally confirmed twice recently.
The first was a seemingly simple urban task: parking downtown. Upon arriving at the designated concrete slab, I didn’t see the familiar coin slot of a parking meter—oh, no. Instead, a sign informed me that my right to temporarily occupy this space hinged on me downloading an “app,” entering my credit card details (sure, why not?), and then, in a crowning moment of digital bureaucracy, taking a picture of the QR code to identify “my spot.” It took me nearly thirty minutes to navigate this setup, and I arrived late to my meeting, sweaty and defeated, having paid twelve cents worth of parking fee via a very expensive iPhone that I still don’t understand how to operate.
A few days later, a physician’s office decided to expand its presence in the digital revolution—or perhaps, the digital extortion ring. I had already received at least five texts asking me to confirm my appointment, each one dripping with the passive-aggressive tone of a digital secretary. You’d think one or perhaps two confirmations were enough. I also had already gone on their portal and filled out all their forms and checked my medications. But the final text, was the masterstroke. It demanded I download another proprietary app to “check in again,” “sign more forms,” and, most importantly, “pay your copay,” all before I was to grace the waiting room with my presence, and in this case wait over an hour to see the doctor for three minutes. Forget the fact that I’ve been seeing this doctor since before Covid was a thing, they already had my insurance, my medical history, and my life story documented in their existing “Portal.” Now, I needed a dedicated application on my cellphone?
My ultimate dread is this: What if I simply choose to secede from the digital republic? What if I’m not a camera expert, a keyboard prodigy, or a devotee of “multiple functions,” which I’m demonstrably not? What if I’m poor, stubborn, or simply choose not to walk around with a small, glowing computer leeching my attention and tracking my whereabouts? Our society hasn’t just assumed every single one of us owns a cell phone; it has systematically dismantled the physical world and rebuilt it inside a series of incompatible, buggy applications.
And what does that say about us? Apparently, we’re all willing participants in a giant mandatory carnival game whose prize is the ability to park a car and pay twelve cents. I’d much rather search for a quarter and “feed the meter.”
Amen!
We don’t do any of them but we no longer drive.
Suzy and I miss you both. W.
We have lost our way in this maze of a digital world.
That we have. W.
I remember back in the day when I was a haz mat emergency response duty officer and a Half-marathon coach at the Long Beach Rescue Mission. One morning I announced to my runners that I was “on the pager” (i.e. on call). My runners laughed at me for being behind them technologically. 🤣 Imagine that! A California state employee charged with the responsibility of coordinating the legal disposal of clandestine drug lab waste being technologically behind sheltered homeless people. SMH!
Love the story.