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April 5 - I was having a bad couple of weeks. Actually, I should rephrase that. I was having my normal couple of weeks (bad with a hint of boredom). It was technology that was down in the dumps.
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1. A perfectly good personal computer that was barely two years old died on me. The technician told me that the motherboard was shot, but I stopped listening after he said "mother" because we can only blame our mothers for so much, right? Did I mention that this computer was less than two years old?
2. The computer that I bought to replace it—even fancier, even more state-of-the-art, and even more unnecessarily souped up with gizmos, gadgets and gee-gaw's—broke down on me less than a week after it arrived in the mail (the mail, by the way, performed perfectly). Those who consider Microsoft's Bill Gates to be the human personification of Satan will enjoy this tale of woe, but I consider it a cautionary story for any of us who are trapped in today's gadget frenzy: I plugged in the computer (full disclosure: it's a Dell) and it worked flawlessly (fuller disclosure: it should for what I paid for it!). It was perfect...except for one thing: I kept getting error messages that said I must "upgrade" to a newer version of "Windows Messenger," which is apparently an instant-messaging program. Not to sound like Andy Rooney, but I've never understood these instant-messaging programs. If I want to have a real-time conversation with someone, there's a much better technology for it: it's called the telephone (and you won't even get carpel tunnel syndrome).
Barraged by error messages, I tried to uninstall Windows Messenger, but the devil kept coming back (for information on this remarkable—and Satanic—phenomenon, I urge you to check out http://www.andyrathbone.com/, a Web site devoted to helping people like me cure my Windows woes). Finally, I decided to just download the newer version, thinking I'd just uninstall it later.
Well, seconds after the download was complete (remember, this was a software download from Microsoft into a computer that's running a Microsoft operating system!) my brand-new computer started acting like a punch-drunk fighter. It was balky, my e-mail basket was filled with penis enlargement ads (how did they know I was curious?) and, worse, whenever I tried to put the computer into stand-by, I'd get this amazing error message: "The device driver for the 'Standard 101/102-ye or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard' device is preventing the machine from entering standby. "
I called Dell support and had a long conversation with a very nice man in India who told me how great it was to be a part of a burgeoning middle class thanks to all of the outsourcing of jobs from the United States to the subcontinent. Beyond that, he blamed Microsoft and directed me to the software giant's Web site.
Have you ever been to Microsoft's support Web site? You might as well be trying to read the Bible in the original Aramaic. There are millions of people just like you asking millions of questions and getting millions of answers that miss the point just enough to be completely useless. My particular error message was not addressed by the Microsoft "knowledge base." It's as if Microsoft had never come up with a solution to its own error message!
I e-mailed Dell and was told to reinstall the operating system and start over. That sounded like a good idea, but when I did the reinstall, I ended up with the opposite of a clean slate: My computer now had two Windows operating systems running parallel—or, more accurately, not running at all. Not only am I unable to get onto the Internet, but I can't use my word-processing program and, you guessed it, I still can't go into stand-by mode.
3. An Apple computer that I've been borrowing suddenly decided that it wouldn't let me burn files onto a CD-ROM because, and I'm quoting here, "the startup disk is full." Yet when I tried to delete files to make room, the computer gave me warning messages like, "This system file can not be deleted."
4. My cellular phone—which also doubles as my Palm Pilot and a wireless Internet browser—broke down after less than six months of fairly mild use. The so-called "smart phone" isn't broken, but the earpiece sometimes shorts out in the middle of a call. It's kind of annoying. So I brought it back to my Sprint PCS store and told them about it. "It probably just needs a wire resoldered," I suggested, recalling the pre-silicon chip days when some kid in Taiwan (a pre-outsourcing kind of outsourcing) actually did fuse wires together on a circuit board. "It's still under warrantee," the clerk said. "We'll just get you a new one." A new one? This is a $400 device! It probably needs a $10 repair, yet Sprint is going to just throw it away.
5. I just threw out the fifth in a series of completely non-functioning cordless telephones. Seriously, what's with these devices? Every call I make crosses signals with the flight controllers at JFK. I tried to give a friend driving directions to my apartment and he ended up in Tucson.
Given all I've been through, I feel qualified to ask: What the heck is going on in this country? We've all heard of planned obsolescence, which was corporate America's way of getting us to buy stuff sooner by having it break just after the point at which it would make financial sense to repair it. But what I am going through—along with probably millions of other Americans—is unplanned obsolescence, an entirely new phenomenon in our consumer culture.
And just as I was sitting in my office (it's actually my bedroom, but as far as the IRS is concerned, it's my office, got it?) wanting to throw all my brand-new computer equipment out the window, I discovered that my neighbors had beaten me to it. Last week, a group called "Recycle This NYC" had set up a tent in front of our public library for people to "recycle" their used, broken or no longer state-of-the-art electronic equipment. And it wasn't just old junk that was being thrown on our society's scrap heap. Sure, there were plenty of broken cassette decks, an old LP turntable and even a few typewriters.
But most of what was being dropped off was fully functioning computer equipment. There was one computer with a flat-screen monitor. There were new-looking printers. There were so many cell phones that if you tried them all, you'd certainly be able to find at least one that could place a clear call. There was even something called a 2.4-gigahertz wireless broadband router. How could something that didn't even exist a few years ago already be junk?
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One guy even dropped off several Apple computers with 340 MB external hard drives. In a world where 40 gigabyte drives are standard, that may not sound like a lot, but a 340 megabyte drive can hold nearly 30,000 columns like this (or 200 penis enlargement ads, whichever you prefer).
Seeing the detritus of modern American life made me reflect about mortality. Not my own, but the mortality of the stuff we buy. In my living room, I have a Sony Trinitron television set that my parents bought in 1981 that still works brilliantly. In my dining room, I am still using the Sanyo amplifier and radio tuner that I bought in 1980. It's in perfect repair, except for the two knobs that my 2-year-old ripped off and hid somewhere.
I guess I'm a bad American. I don't throw out perfectly useful stuff (I buy perfectly useful stuff that turns out to be garbage). "When you organize these recycling drives, it seems that our entire economy is propped up by companies tricking us into thinking that we need new stuff just because it's new," said Rachel Cernanski, a volunteer. Of course, it's been that way from the days when car makers started changing body styles every year to make you feel like your three-year-old car was ancient. But the cycle is much faster now. Not only do we feel that a computer that we bought last year for $2,000 is no longer useful because there's a faster, bigger model out there, but we can't even be bothered to save a $400 cell phone because it might involve repairing rather than replacing.
To me, that's what deserves an error message.
Gersh Kuntzman is also Brooklyn bureau chief for The New York Post. His website is at http://www.gersh.tv
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