All the rich in history couldn’t buy the tech we toss away | Fred Grimm
I’m rich. Tech rich.
Not Powerball rich. Not Bugatti La Voiture Noire supercar ($18.7 million) rich. Not Rolex Sky Dweller Chocolate Dial Automatic Men’s 18kt Everose Gold Oyster Watch ($61,000) rich. Not four front row seats (don’t even ask) Taylor Swift concert rich.
I’m rich compared to my past selves, who’d be wildly envious of even the discarded tech that my 2023 iteration relegated to cardboard boxes in the back of the garage. I’ve got laptops, tablets, PCs that anthropologists would classify as early 21st Century antediluvians. I’ve got a circa 2006 iPod Shuffle that hasn’t shuffled in 15 years. I’ve got more discarded Bluetooth devices than actual teeth.
A forgotten iPhone discovered in a desk drawer now seems as antiquated as a dial-up Bell telephone. Never mind that it still has 100,000 times more processing power than the NASA computer that guided the first moon landing. The 1969 me would have been dazzled.
Not that anyone would characterize me as “modern,” but modern me wears a smartwatch that no one but Dick Tracy could have imagined when I was a kid. My watch can do anything Dick’s walkie-talkie watch could do while also providing directions, warning (annoyingly so) when ambient sounds reach hazardous decibels or deducing (wrongly) that I’ve taken a tumble. In its spare time, the watch administers quickie electrocardiograms. Progress does make my old heart flutter.
After all, ’tis the season of extravagant electronics, a holiday tsunami of tech-laden gifts that didn’t exist before my hair turned gray and my jump shot faded. (Mind you, with scientifically engineered, “tech loaded” Nike Air Zoom GT Jump 2 sneakers [$180], I could still run and jump. Just not on the same day.)
In a year when Americans tell pollsters they’re pessimistic about their economic prospects, they’re spending $24 billion on high-tech toys, smart appliances, biometric shirts (don’t ask me) and computer-tailored jeans. The hot-selling Barbie Dreamhouse isn’t exactly new, though the 2023 battery-powered version features a handicap-accessible elevator.
No, I’m not launching into a screed bemoaning America’s holiday excesses while the poor struggle.
Poor people are struggling, of course, in need of decent housing, nutritious food and transportation.
Life below the federal poverty line ($30,000 for a family of four) ain’t easy. Yet, a 2011 Heritage Foundation study found that a majority of families classified as poor by the U.S. Census Bureau owned microwaves, computers, video gaming consoles and an average two flat-screen TVs. The poor have stuff that a century ago was beyond the reach of even the Rockefellers, the Mellons or the Vanderbilts.
Of course, the robber barons had their pricey luxuries. The 1922 Chevy offered a car radio for $200 (equivalent to spending $6,000 in 2023). The Super 8 Packard featured air conditioning in 1940 and power windows in 1941.
But by historical standards, my very ordinary 2017 Mazda rivals the Batmobile. My SUV projects speed and navigation info onto the windshield, automatically brakes in emergencies, has a cruise control device that keeps a steady speed and a steady distance from the car in front. I’ve got heated seats, a Bose sound system with a dozen speakers, a steering wheel that vibrates if I drift out of my lane, a backup camera, automatic tailgate, warning beeps up the wazoo and a stern woman’s voice that warns me, “Stoplight camera ahead.”
Unhappily, owning a wealth of new fangled gadgets doesn’t translate into feeling wealthy. Not if everyone else, even the poor, possesses the same stuff. To feel truly rich, you’ve got to accumulate more than your cousin Rudy.
What’s the point of buying all this fabulous tech, if it doesn’t evoke envy in our friends and neighbors? (Maybe that explains the Bugatti.) I own an embarrassingly large smart TV, but so does everyone else I know. (Though my OLED screen is sharp enough to lip-read Ron DeSantis’ secret mutterings: “Why the hell would anyone live in God-forsaken Iowa?”)
Modern Americans don’t talk about this. At least not to one another. Instead, they bark commands at Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant. (Americans own 133 million smart speakers.) That’ll all end when these AI-powered gadgets tell their intellectually inferior owners to shut up and turn the lights off their own damn selves.
Meanwhile, I’ve accumulated so much wondrous tech that its very abundance has begun to dull my appreciation.
Besides, none of this new technology has delivered the same thrill I felt the first time I fired up a newly installed, used eight-track tape player in my 1958 Ford.
Admittedly, the obsolete tech that blasted the Moody Blues at full volume (my Apple Watch would have gone nuts) 50-some years ago may not produce the same nostalgic effect in another person.
But if you’re in desperate need of a holiday gift for someone special (and old), nothing I’ve heard since has sounded so good.
Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @grimm_fred.