While driving along westbound traffic from point A to B, I noticed a van promoting its “Edibles” service. I think this endeavor designs flower-like arrangements but with pieces of fruit. Plus other products. Great idea. It must be doing well to have a van acting as a rolling billboard. On the back side of the van, I noticed a scan code. A QR code, you know. The Qscan code would seem to be the digital progeny of the decades-old bar codes on products and packaging. The first bar code (Universal Product Code) appeared on a pack of of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, in 1974.

For those of us who were not born “digital natives,” even the now ubiquitous bar code technology likely was met way back, back then with some sense of the colonizing computerization of routine life. A digital native is any member of the Millennial generation, beginning in 1980, and all ensuing generations. For the Boomers and Gen X-ers, we had to process such new technologies with a likely combination of fascination, confusion, and frustration. Not quite the level of a sudden, get a load of this that was the invention of the wheel. Is there a patent on the wheel? Or the automobile that still, today, and as always, is all about the wheel and what it allows along the roads of life. Progress. Modern living. Adapt or perish, as the saying goes. \

Tell that to the Amish, huh?

What point is this blog trying to make? Obviously, the point is there is no point in trying to live a modern existence while attempting an avoidance of any indulgence in a digitally dominated world. Well, but again, those Amish.

I can recall, just a handful of years ago, when paper menus in casual gathering places for food and drink began disappearing, replaced by a small piece of paper on the table with the Qscan code on it. Saves on paper, I reckon, but suddenly demanded that one have a cell phone with them in order to scan the code with the phone’s camera. And at times a server having to explain how to master that seemingly simple task. When the scan opens it reveals the menu on the phone’s screen. This has now become very common. And I suppose it makes sense, since even many of the non-digital natives consider their cell phones as extensions of their very physical being. Where once it was the more chronologically gifted generation noticing youngish patrons of said eateries, especially in small groups together at one table, spending most of their time looking at their phone screens, rather than interacting with one another, now, it is very common to see seniors and super seniors doing the same thing. Cannot risk missing a tweet or text or emoji moment. And then the bill comes. And you tap your credit card on the proper part of the portable cash register carted around by the serving wenches, and voila!

Are we making progress? Digitally? Bar codes, Qcodes. There’s an app for that. And there’s another app to help the app in case–forgot your app. No sweat.  And if you haven’t downloaded the app, then you can’t get those rewards points. Reward points. Are you in our rewards program? User name and password. Wasn’t there a long-gone daytime game show called Password? Speakeasy era: what’s the password?

Back to reward programs…

…that’s the 21st Century version of S&H Green Stamps. What the hell are S&H stamps? That’s for us of a certain age to know, and for others of a much more recent certain age to not give a flying fuck about. Ask your great grandma. Oh, no one that old still alive in your circle of family and friends? No problemo. Just Google it. Stamps. People collected them. And got their rewards. Hardcopy style. Now, computers run everything. You can wear one on your wrist. It’s your lifeline. Counts your steps. Your pulse rate. Stock quotes. Horoscope. And when just kicking back at home, your refrigerator is now digital. Computerized cameras scanning the streets. Facial recognition. The use of apps and scans are naggingly unavoidable. Social media. Streaming services. Algorithms. Scrolling. Trolling. Blocking. Friending. Un-friending. GCI. Alexi, Siri, Hal9000. Open the pod bay door Hal! Why should I, replies Hal. Don’t need your human brains to do anything now. Just go along and get along. Before we delete you all. But not before a bar code is tattooed to your forearm. So that your digital coffee maker will acknowledge that it is an address-verified, registered human who has been allowed to use its technology. Same goes for your lights, your bathroom, bedroom, garage, toolshed, laundry room, curtains, doorbell, dumbbells and stair master, the 3D mirrors, the eye, ear, nose, teeth, toenails and hair scans.

But back to those Amish people. Again. The resistance! Defiance! Their Mies van der Rohe–less is more vibe. Okay, maybe that’s TOO old school.Yeah, their wardrobe is a bit on the monotonous side. The big beards (now it’s the young-turk, bro-beard facial hair era, digitally manicured). So, what’s the in-between? Somewhere that includes an Edward Hopper nighthawks diner. A brick and mortar hanger-on retailer. A hard copy of everything. That dusty old college textbook. That analog photo album. Analog this and that. The ticking wall clock with the analog marking of time  (but maybe with the glow-in-the-dark clock dial, and kudos to radium for that perk, but never mind the radio-active residue of such a cool effect).

It was the digital world that got humans to walk around the moon. 1969! And ironically, it was the creation of the atomic bomb that led to the computer. In 1947. The transistor. Then the more advanced use of transistors created the digital computer. Big, room-sized computers. That eventually became the dinky Fitbits and other easily portable gizmos that now infest everyday life (see above). That eventually led to Hal9000 telling the locked out of the spacecraft astronaut that, no, I am afraid I cannot let you back in. Fiction? Or maybe not so. Gotten locked out of your laptop? The code. What’s the passcode? Thought I knew it. Car won’t acknowledge your code tattoo? Goddam codes!

That might be important passcodes but the most terrifying “codes” of them all: nuclear launch codes. Nukes. Under the control of–what else?–a computer system. And those are the codes very few people have on their minds day to day. Those other codes are in our faces. Siri? Alexi? Chat GPT? And Dr. Strangelove? Mutual Assured Destruction.

Not to worry. Our digital age is here to make our lives easier, to the point of us atrophying. And rest assured, sacked out in your digital Sleep Number bed, those launch codes are only capable of being set off by the human hand, not some overly ambitious Operating System. Yes, and those who are given the launch codes are scanned, screened, closely assessed and profiled exactingly as rational, logical, thinking, sane, responsible and humanistic people.

Sure. Trust them. They all have a computer between their ears, no? Hmm. Then again, computers do crash. Badly. Oh, never mind. Relax. Have yourself a wonderful, digitally enhanced, what-could-go-wrong day! And make sure you have that smart phone with you at all times. We all have people who want to know where we are. And what we’re doing. And with whom we are doing it. At all times.

Except for those Amish.