Quaxting and Other Recent Advances

The problem with technology is its incessant constancy.

There once was a time -- our children and grandchildren will find it difficult to believe -- when being out of touch did not constitute a crisis of communication. Being out of touch did not mean cell towers had crumbled or satellites had plummeted from their orbits. It was a common occurrence, not a cause for filing missing person reports or raising the national security level to Orange.

If you left your house, you were out of touch. If you were driving from point A to point B, you were out of touch anywhere in between. If you were in school, at work, in a meeting, at lunch, in the bathroom, or at a movie, you were out of touch.

Out of touch was not a permanent condition. Once you got home, or to a place that had a phone, you magically became available again. You could borrow your friend's house phone to "check in" with your parents, or sit at your office desk and call whomever your heart desired to call. You were reachable, and so was anyone within reasonable distance of a telephone.

When we took vacations we didn't waste time uploading pictures to Facebook, or checking the latest trending tweets, or bitching about the weak 3G signal at the campground that kept us from streaming YouTube's latest viral videos. We played cards and built campfires. We made conversation. We were happy the toilets at the KOA campground were separated by walls. We visited waterfalls and wildernesses and skyscrapers and monuments, and we didn't have 98 megapixel high-resolution tablet cameras with which to capture our experiences. We had binoculars and Kodak Instamatic cameras with Flipflashes you hoped would fire when you snapped a picture. And wherever you were, mountains or city, highway or back country road, you were most decidedly out of touch.

But not anymore!

Thanks to cell phones and smart phones and email and Skype, we're never more than a megabyte away from each other. My coworkers can reach me via email at any time of any day, regardless of necessity. Our daughter can quack a complaint at her boyfriend via text -- a new skill we call "quaxting" -- without his having to be in the same county, let alone be aware of what he might have done to warrant her quaxting him in the first place. My son can even answer an iChat video call from his uncle while sitting on the toilet. Technology has broken down all walls, it seems, even the bathroom walls.

And the sense of urgency is spread evenly over all modes of communication to the extent every bing of a text or bong of an arriving email requires an immediate response. I used to laugh that my in-laws had a telephone in their bathroom. Now we might as well have suppository phones. One clench of a butt cheek answers it, another clench ends the call, and a good sneeze gets you through to 911.

Maybe by the time I'm old and gray I'll be able to put down the cell phone, turn off the video phone, shut down the internet service, and disconnect for a day or two. I better send out an email blast and post about on Facebook before I do, just so nobody sends the police to my door to check on me.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Giddy Giggling Geese

Sometimes I get annoyed with the way our sons communicate.

In person, they're not bad. Typical kid issues arise from time to time, such as having to remind them to say hello to everyone in the room, or properly thank a person who gave them gifts. Maybe the German needs a little more prodding than his brother, but he eventually breaks free of his space cadet stupor and behaves appropriately.

It's the technology of the day that seems to rob these otherwise polite children of any sense of propriety and occasion. Granted, the boys are only 10, and 10-year-old boys are not world-reknowned for their conversational competence, but at some point you should be able to expect years worth of reminders to take root in their brains.

The Italian, who is never at a loss for words, finds it necessary for his lips to be touching the receiver during every phone call. The end result is a garbled cacophony of gutteral clatter. I now begin every telephone conversation with him by instructing him: "Take the phone out of your mouth."

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the German. Getting more than three consecutive words out of him at sufficient volume to be registered by human ears is a unique occurrence. During a recent business trip, he and I shared the shortest conversation I've ever had with another human being. My Lovely Wife handed him the phone and all the German said was:

"Hi, Daddy. You want to talk to Mommy?"

Their computer-enhanced communication skills are even more catastrophic. You would think the fact of being seen by the person on the other end of an iChat would keep the boys more focused on the conversation. After all, there that person is, on the computer, talking to us live via free video feed, one Apple computer to another. No such luck. As My Lovely Wife and I alternately shush and bark at them to be quiet, they bound around the room behind us like loose cannon members of some improvisational acrobatic troupe participating in an original performance of a production titled "Watch Me!"

When I'm traveling, I tend to find their lack of involvement in the conversation drives up my blood pressure. I often get little enjoyment from the exercise other than the obvious pleasure of hearing their voices.

That's why I was surprised at my reaction the other night when I called home from Orlando. First up was the Italian, who started in with his garbled mouth breathing before quickly gaving way to a fit of laughter. Turns out the German was giving him a foot massage -- why, I don't know -- and it tickled so much he simply could not control himself. It was clear, yet again, there would be no meaningful sharing of information, but I didn't mind.

There's something infectious about genuine, uncontrolled laughter that allows it to get into your brain and flip all kinds of switches. The first switch the Italian's laughter flipped was the "Get Over Yourself" switch, followed immediately by a quick trip to the "Lighten Up, Francis" and "Remember What It Was Like To Be a Kid" switches.

When the German took over the phone, the Italian took over the foot massaging, so then it was the German's turn to giggle like a maniac. I found myself chuckling along as if I were there with them in the thick of the tickle fight.

Tired from lack of sleep and mentally drained from delayed travel, corporate speeches, guest speakers and back-to-back breakout sessions, their laughter was more welcome than any number of words.




© 2011 Mark Feggeler