I have a confession to make.
I am a Luddite.
I can finally admit it.
I probably should have realized earlier, but it didn't occur to me that I had a problem until last summer. That was when I was first accused of being a Luddite. I think the exact context of the exchange went something like this. I was in the passenger's seat of a friend's car, and his phone started talking.
"In one mile, turn left."
"Wow! Your phone's talking to you!" That was me.
"Yes. It's got a GPS."
"Wow! That's amazing! Look, it's telling you everywhere you need to go!"
"..."
My friend gave me a look that seemed to say, "Do you live in a box?" I was too impressed with the fact that a phone could be a GPS as well as a phone to care.
Later that day, we were watching TV, and in the middle of a program, he picked up the remote, and rewound. He rewound. On TV!
"Wow! You're rewinding TV! That's crazy! How do you do that?!"
"It's tevo."
"That's awesome!"
It was around this time that I got that look again, which I previously thought reserved only for conversations referencing pop culture. My buddy proceeded to inform me that I was indeed a Luddite. I had to ask what he was referring to, which is when I learned that a Luddite is someone with a lack of affinity for technological advancement, more precisely someone "opposed to technological change."
I scoffed. I'm not a Luddite! I know all about the internets!
If you're anything like me, you might seem like it's a bit of a stretch that my inexperience and amazement with technologies like talking GPSs and rewinding TV truly puts me in the Luddite category. After all, it's not that unheard of to still keep paper maps in your car, right? And own a VHS player?
According to my friend, these things are not just a little arcane, but possibly unheard of in this century, and I am seriously lagging behind the technological curve.
Sadly, I have slowly come to realize that perhaps this is true, and my condition is worse than I originally feared. My second inkling, after my original accuser planted the idea in my mind, came at work, some weeks later.
I was relatively new to my job, and for some bureaucratic reason, I had to fill out some forms and get certain people important information, like a copy of my social security card.
After delaying the inevitable for quite some time, I finally decided to suck it up and face The Fax Machine. Since I don't work on the main campus of NIH, the easiest way to get people important forms you perhaps shouldn't e-mail (like your social security card), is to fax them. Up until this point in my life (22 proud years), I had never used a fax machine. But how hard could it be? It's like a phone, only with a copier, right?
Wrong.
I made my way to the third floor of our building, where I found the fax machine in a deserted corner. It is small and black and unassuming. It has about five buttons, and a tiny screen with enough room for two lines of text.
I stared it down for a while.
Finally, I pushed some buttons. The machine seemed to be responding, so I pushed a couple of other buttons. Good. I could read the screen, and the green light was on, and everything seemed to be going okay.
I took my social security card and put in the place where it seemed paper should go. So far, so good. I hit the FAX button. Still good. Then, the machine swallowed my card. The briefest flicker of a doubt crossed my mind, but I ignored it. Fax machines are supposed to swallow paper, right? And then they give it back again, along with a nice confirmation of my fax, right?
As you can perhaps guess, this did not happen.
What did happen was that the fax machine made several angry beeps and clicks, then proceeded to show me a big glowing error message. My card was nowhere to be seen.
Uh oh.
I tried pushing some buttons. I tried prying the lid open. I tried faxing another sheet of paper. I failed to receive any positive feedback from the fax machine, short of several desultory beeps and clicks. Finally, I tried panicking.
Unfortunately, I was in the middle of a series of experiments and quickly needed to get back to the lab. I hastily made the science happen, all the while hoping no one else needed to use the fax machine.
I was in luck. Not only did I manage to not royally screw up all my experiments in my distracted state, but our building's all-knowing and all-helpful secretary was at her desk when I returned upstairs. I proceeded to explain my predicament in a halting and red-faced manner.
Somehow, and this is why she is the best possible secretary, she managed to make me not feel like a complete idiot for failing to use a fax machine (did I mention that it has four buttons?). Additionally, she had experience dismantling the fax machine and proceeded to do so in an orderly fashion, retrieving my social security card and then copying and faxing it for me, without once mentioning that perhaps I could have asked for help using such an advanced piece of equipment (she has since retired, and I believe achieved the secretarial equivalent of sainthood).
I feel the need right now to mention the vague irony here. A fax machine is what, fifty bucks? Maybe? On a daily basis in my lab I work with equipment worth several orders of magnitude more than that, advanced robotic equipment on par with what the pharmaceutical industry uses. I am the local "expert" on the FDSS (Functional Drug Screening System), and can competently use luminescent and fluorescent readers, flow cytometers, and a number of other specialized instruments. And yet, I can't figure out a bloody fax machine.
This second experience with "advanced" technology left me befuddled and, yes, averse to certain new technologies. However, I did my best to cope and forget about it.
Recently, however, the complete extent of my technological ineptitude has revealed itself.
I went to Best Buy with Brian a few weeks ago and didn't recognize half of anything in the store. I asked Brian where the regular TVs were and he gave me a funny look. "What regular TVs?"
"You know, the not flat ones."
Again with that look.
On a recent road trip, I was reacquainted with the possible technologies available in cars, like automatic windows and locks, trunk-opening buttons, CD players (not to mention USB ports for your ipod) and seats that can be adjusted in directions other than forward and back. Although I love Charlie (my car), he has nothing other than AC and a tape deck.
Last week, I managed to successfully use the fax machine at work on the first try. And just today, I finally uploaded pictures from the last eight months onto facebook.
And so, I am finally ready to accept the truth. Maybe I do live in a box...
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