The origins of defense contracting are shrouded in the mists of history — or at least cloaked by the Official Secrets Act. I’ll bet, though, that the original defense contractors were the guys who came up with the Swiss Army knife.
Really.
The Swiss Army knife inconveniently combines unrelated tools in a package which is simultaneously too small to be useful and too big to comfortably fit in your pocket. Only an experienced, dedicated design committee could have created a device which promises so much and delivers so little. Then they made a fortune by selling it to the Army. I’m sure these guys were the ancestors of the people who created the Osprey Vertical-Take-Off-and-Landing aircraft.
Not all of these guys work for Defense, though. A fair number of these “jam it together and see what sticks” designers work in cell phone manufacturing.
My new phone can handle my e-mail, provide access to the internet, keep track of my appointments, identify my location via GPS, provide navigation, download videos, store information on all of my contacts, update my Facebook profile, connect wirelessly to any number of Bluetooth devices, capture voice mail messages from people who are annoyed that I’m not picking up, and, in a pinch, make and receive calls.
At least I think it makes calls. To be candid, the interface is a little confusing and so I haven’t successfully dialed anyone yet. The best I can manage is to use another feature — voice dialing — which is a little like conversing with a two-year-old girl who has a sixty-two-year-old voice.
“Say a command!” she snaps.
“Call 555-2313,” I answer. No sense in being polite to her — she wasn’t polite to me.
“Did you say five … five … five … two … three … nine … three?”
“No. I said …”
“Say a command.”
“Call 555-2313.”
“Did you say five … five … five … five … three … three … one?”
“No, I…”
“Command not recognized!”
Then she hangs up in a huff and I have to start all over again. The time I invest in trying to get snarly-telephone-lady to make a call could be much more effectively used by driving randomly around town until I happen to run into the person I’m trying to reach.
I guess I’ll have to learn how to actually dial the phone, but that’s going to be difficult because my phone is “feature rich”. In non-sales-guy terms that means it’s packed full of stuff I’ll never use. If each of the “features” weighed a couple of pounds, I’d need a forklift to move my phone.
One of the absolutely indispensable features (according to the manufacturer and my two young-adult sons) is the ability to use custom ring tones. The term “ring” is used, of course, because in the old days telephones signaled an incoming call by means of a large electrically-activated bell that would leave your ears “ringing” for several minutes after you picked up the receiver. As a result, most telephone conversations started with the person who answered saying, “What?” and “Who is this?” and “Turn down those chimes!” for several minutes until their hearing returned to normal.
Modern science has solved that problem in the same way it solves most problems, by creating a new and more annoying problem.
Back in the day, everybody recognized the sound of a telephone much the same way cavemen recognized the roar of a meat-eating predator. Over time phones (and predators) have grown more sophisticated. The ear-splitting ring has been replaced by an astonishing array of chirps, trills, and quavers. Not content with merely having upset the natural order of things, scientists moved into the realm of things-man-was-not-meant-to-know and allowed cell phone owners to use any sound they wanted in place of the old reliable ring noise.
This piece of “feature richness” is particularly annoying to those of us over forty. We’ll be walking through a crowded public place like a grocery store, hardware store or men’s restroom at the ball park when we hear a catchy tune we remember from our youth.
Hey! we’ll think to ourselves. That’s a great song!
Then we’ll shuffle our feet a little while mouthing the words.
“Slow ride! Take it easy!”
It’s about then that the music cuts off and we’re rudely interrupted by someone saying, “Hello.”
If congress wants to do something useful, it should outlaw using songs I recognize as ring tones. It should also outlaw using random environmental noises as ring tones. Things have gotten so bad than any unexpected noise — a dog barking, a car backfiring, a baby crying, a clock chiming — sets my head swiveling like a lone meerkat on predator patrol. In the past week, I have tried to answer the dishwasher, the ice maker, and the garbage disposal.
The ringer on my own personal phone is an annoying two-tone sound that might be a warning klaxon from a cold-war-ear Soviet missile silo or the death rattle of an industrial welding machine. Whatever it is, I wish I could change it. I just can’t seem to find the appropriate menu on my “feature rich” phone.
Navigating the menus is a like following Indiana Jones into a ruined temple. Misleading paths and booby traps abound; even the slightest mistake could be fatal … to the phone. Is the ring tone under “Options”? “Sounds”? “Alerts”? I wouldn’t be surprised to find a menu which read, “Press here for self-destruct.”
So mostly I use my “feature rich” phone in the default mode. According to the salesman it has awesome capabilities, but sadly it’s trapped with me and will have to settle for being a high-tech underachiever. It’s in good company, though. I keep it in my pocket with my Swiss Army knife.
