It was still dark when Larry and I left his house, heading out in his truck for a lake some distance away. Spring is crappie time, and it’s my favorite freshwater fish to catch and eat.
By sunup we still had a good long way to go and I was hungry. The problem was the boat hitched up behind us. “There’s an overrated fast-food restaurant up ahead. Let’s get a breakfast sandwich with one of those stupid names they want me to use.”
Behind the wheel, my old fishing buddy cut his eyes across the cab. “If we go to Great Gary’s to get something to go, you won’t say Great GarMuffin, will you? Because I know for a fact you won’t pronounce Horsey Sauce at Arby’s.”
“We’re too old to pronounce dumb names like that, but my daughters have spent most of their lives trying to make me slip up and say that name at Arby’s. When the cashier asks me which one I want through that cheap crackling low-bid microphone, I tell them I want both sauces.”
“You’re getting to be a curmudgeon. You make things hard on yourself, you know.”
“Nah. I’ve aleays been a curmudgeon, but when we order in a few minutes, I’ll just use the meal’s number.”
He steered into the parking lot. “My son uses an app when he eats here.”
“No apps for me. I hate how technology has taken over our lives. People should just talk to each other without nonsensical jargon, and without using the word ‘amazing’ or ‘like’ in conversation. Besides, something would mess up, and I don’t want to struggle with it when I’m hungry.
“A man can starve to death if there’s no phone or screen nearby. I can’t even order a pizza anymore, because they won’t take calls. You have to click through their website. I just want to walk in, order, hand someone the cash, and leave.”
Because of the boat, the drive-thru was out. We parked some distance away and walked inside a video arcade instead of the overrated eatery I was expecting.
Giant touch screens flashed with colorful photos of the food and drinks on their menu. Like something from a science fiction movie, frowning people stood before the order screens with a finger poised, occasionally punching an item which vanished only to be replaced by myriad options.
Appearing to be frozen in time, folks our age were held hostage, overwhelmed with the new-fangled order process and likely wishing they’d gone through the drive-thru to be misunderstood through a cheap microphone.
In addition, most wore glasses and were trying to see through the magnification of tri-focals, their noses pointed toward the ceiling. Because we spend most of our time staring down at the phones in our hands, the sounds of grinding neck vertebrae tilting upward was deafening.
“Minimal contact,” Willie surmised. “I wonder how often they clean those screens people keep touching.”
Bypassing the zombies staring into cold white oblivion, we walked up to one of the two registers, intending to use real cash. Both devices appeared to be unplugged.
We waited for several minutes while the employees went about their business behind the counter. Customers in cars appeared and disappeared on the other side of the drive-thru window.
“Number two sixty-six!” A woman behind the counter shouted. Apparently, fast food technology hasn’t evolved enough to bypass the raspy, screeching human voice carbonized by forty years of cigarettes.
She finally saw us. “We don’t take orders there anymore. You have to use the kiosks like those folks.”
I turned toward the spellbound people staring at the screens. I wondered if they’d still be there next year, starved skeletal beings with one finger held aloft. “No. I don’t have to do anything.”
We left, and that brings us in a curiously roundabout way to how technology helped me write my first novel.
Bear with me, this is a writer’s illogical mind.
Back in the olden days, I used a typewriter, or as Mark Twain called it, an “infernal machine.” It was also slow and required much backspacing, carbon paper, gallons of Wite-Out, and lots of twisting and adjusting.
I pounded those keys for decades, first on a manual machine in high school, then a portable version in college, which kept me in beer money by typing term papers for a dollar a page.
Ah, then came the IBM Selectric, powered by electricity and not the tips of my fingers. Novels almost formed. Many of them, and they all withered by page fifty or so. I spent hours, no, days, wait, even months, pecking out those pages destined for File 13.
When I read that Micky Spillane typed with two fingers and never edited his manuscripts, I wondered what was wrong with me. He wrote I, The Jury in 19 days, and as a rookie writer, I couldn’t figure out how he did it.
Honestly, I still don’t.
Then came the 286 computer, and my writing world changed. It set me free! Fingers flew and words appeared. The process was no longer linear, and I wrote entire chapters out of order, \ and days or weeks later, plugged them into the flow of work and they fit perfectly.
The world of active electrons became my friend, allowing me to pound out two, three, or four thousand words a day to build the structural foundation of a novel.
So with those successes, why won’t I assimilate into this world of apps and self-service ordering screens? Because there’s an evil side to all this. An entire manuscript vanished into thin air one day about twenty-five years ago, and even in the last eighteen months several days’ worth of work was lost when my laptop took issue with The Cloud and refused to “shake hands,” as a technologically adept friend explained.
In my personal experience, there is always an issue waiting to arise. The one time I tried to order off a screen in McDonald’s, I wound up with two extra Happy Meals (see how they sucker us into using those ridiculous terms?), cheese on a burger I didn’t want, no coffee for the four creams I received, and the Skynet’s refusal to take the gift card that sparked the whole visit.
I finally had to get someone to boot up the register and take the entire order while standing face to face.
The final contrasting conflict is my Macbook Air, which is such a mystery that I often hides what I’ve written only to flash it on the screen when I’m checking emails.
This new world of ours is always changing, but sometimes I need a personal technical support team, for the computer and to assist with ordering food in these new updated, high-tech restaurants.
Or maybe someone about ten years old.
I’m feeling that all of these new-fangled engineering marvels, apps, and human-free self-service businesses leaves me outside in the drive-thru lane, looking in through the order window.
The Zombie Apocalpyse has already occurred. Seriously. I’ll just say I’m deeply concerned about people’s ability to interact w/one another as humans. I mean people seriously don’t even know how to say “hello” or “good morning” or “good afternoon” or anything else. And instead of technology being used to serve us, we are now the servants of technology.
And your post reminds me of one precautionary thing I haven’t yet done–print out a physical copy of my last manuscript, just in case!
Let’s all say hello to someone in person today. Look ’em in the eye and greet them. I dare you!
These electrons paved the way for me to completely my first novel, but I still email manuscripts to myself as they progress, just…in…case.
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. When it works I love it when it doesn’t, I hate it.
I will admit, if I were still typing on a manual typewriter, I never would’ve written a book, let alone 18.
I just look at all the successful novelists in the past and marvel at they ability to hammer out those sometimes massive tomes. Had I learned early, I might have been able to write pulps, but even then, it would have been difficult. Writing five pages a day might have been possible, but then editing them and re-writing a second time would have been an enormous setback. L’Amour, Spillane, Westlake, those guys were something. But then look at Michner’s tomes, and those written by Stephen King in his early days. Jacqueline Susann is another, though I think I hear she dictated books in later years, but SOMEONE had to type them.
Rev, glad to hear someone else is concerned about using those smeary, greasy, disgusting touchscreens. Need to write a horror story about a plague spread by contaminated screens.
If at all possible, I go through checkout lines with human cashiers. Too many jobs being lost to tech and I wanna say hi to a human. Ironically, big chains are discovering theft goes up dramatically with self checkout and are reverting to humans.
No question word processing revolutionized writing in a good way. IMHO, cut and paste is the best invention since the wheel. And if the internet didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here today at TKZ.
But ChatGPT, et.al. is destroying our ability to think and put words together in a meaningful way.
AI overviews that have taken precedence on Google are terrible research sources that can’t be trusted. Yet how many people (esp. young students) know enough to dig deeper? It’s fast, convenient…and inaccurate as hell.
I’ll skip breakfast, thank you.
I’m with you, Debbie. I like human interaction. Moreover, despite being “the techie” during my library career, I refuse to use ChatGPT and other generative A.I. It makes me weep to think of what has happened to internet searching.
You’re right. Walmart and Target are returned to human checkers because of theft, which might be a plot for someone someday.
AI keeps wanting to help, and every time I open a new blank page to start a column or article, even a blog post, that annoying message comes up that AI wants to get me started.
No. Way.
And don’t get me started about medical appointments were now you’re supposed to “e-check in” before you arrive and get five texts asking you to confirm your appointment, and the same number of emails. I did the on-line e-check in for an appointment recently–happy to save a few trees since they’ve always made me fill out the same paperwork every single time I go there. Then I get to the clinic, and she hands me an I-pad and asks me to fill out the forms digitally. I tell her I already did and she says it’s not showing, you’ll have to do it again. I write “on-file” for every question. They have good intentions,(saving paper), but I can’t help getting irritated! I do love writing my books on a computer, though. I remember writing them on a typewriter, then cutting up sections with scissors and taping them in a new order, then retyping the whole thing. And white-out. And correction tape. I’ll keep my computer, thank you very much. (plus being able to do so much research on-line is so convenient.)
You just hit on another pet peeve. Automatic check-ins and like you said, repetitive robot requests to confirm. I confirmed when I made the appointment. I ignore those requests now, and it hasn’t been a problem, though we schedule AC service a couple of years ago (on the phone) and when they didn’t show, I called.
“You didn’t confirm when we sent a text.”
“I confirmed with the lady on the phone.”
“But you have to re-confirm via text.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Would you like to make another appointment?”
“*$%@# no!”
I won’t use those kiosks either, Rev. There’s definitely bad with the good when it comes to new technology. I just bought a new car to replace my 2003 Civic, which I bought new in 2003 and have been driving ever since, and the difference between them is profound. The new car has an a 11 inch display screen, back up cameras, collision avoidance, lane assist etc etc. It can be overwhelming. We actually met with a “delivery specialist” three weeks after purchasing the car to go over any questions I’d had after having some experience just driving it.
The nice thing about the car tech is I can decide whether or not to use a lot of it.
And it’s not supplanting human interaction. The idea of having an “A.I.” friend on the other hand, is horrific to contemplate. No thanks.
I meant to say that I’m a big fan of using computers to write–so easy to edit, proof etc. Always back up your writing is important, and not just to the cloud.
And therein lies another Strange. I can’t punch in a destination on my Navigation system while sitting at light and the car is in gear, but it’s all right to punch through ten layers to find a radio station, or to check in on most of my trucks apps.
Even funnier, the Voice command always gets it wrong, but when Gilstrap’s in the truck with me and demands a destination from the other side of the cab, it always understands what he’s saying. Someone needs to invent a Nav operator that speaks Texan.
Thank you Techies for computers! Cut and paste, revisions, and being able to correct spelling is The Best!
As for Kiosks at restaurants, I won’t spend my money at those establishments. No real people, you don’t deserve my patronage. And then to expect a tip…. sorry, nope! [and I agree… you need a ten-year old to maneuver the screens]
Good lord. Tips is an entirely different discussion, and I’m tired of it. I wonder if I can work it into my next blog post…
I do not even understand how I ended up here, but I assumed this publish used to be great