KEY POINTS:
I have a question. Are people dim? I don't mean dim like one of those vile Labourite light bulbs that throw so little light that you're liable to bump into your own lounge furniture even though you haven't moved it in 10 years.
Nor do I mean,
when I ask if people are dim, that you can't quite recall ever having seen them. If you're finding people are somewhat dim in your memory, I'd suggest you might be dead.
No, what I mean when I ask whether people are dim is whether they're a bit thick. This question came to me as I was again standing in a queue at the sushi joint over the road from the Herald waiting while every single person in front of me paid for five bucks worth of sushi with their goddamn ATM card.
I remember getting my first bank card sometime in the mid-1980s as a feckless student in Palmerston North. Twenty years ago it was actually rather thrilling having a little plastic card which, when you popped it through the little slot on the ATM and punched in numbers, caused actual cash to pop out. It wasn't thrilling because it involved money, it was a buzz just using the machine because the only complicated bit of technology most people had operated back then was an electronic calculator or a digital watch with an alarm, neither of which we could really figure out.
Two decades on, those dim people in the sushi queue weren't using their damn plastic cards because there's a tiny little buzz involved in paying for something using an electronic gadget. They're using them because they're too lazy to carry cash.
Don't these people care that they probably paying 15c, 20c, or even 60c for each plastic card transaction?
Don't they know that if every single one of them had 10 bucks in cash on them - like I always do - the queue would move at twice, or possibly thrice, the speed?
Actually I suspect these people aren't dim. The problem is we have been seduced by the promise of technology but instead find ourselves being slowly screwed by it. And, in the case of that queue, we're being slowly screwed by it when we're not even using it ourselves.
Back when I was issued my first bank card, we were told the "high-tech revolution" - remember that? - would bestow on us paperless offices and three-day working weeks. It would be a golden age, a blessed time when all would be right with world, and trees would feel safe again.
Instead frequent reports suggest we're now working longer hours than ever before and, if your workplace looks anything like mine, more trees are being murdered than ever before.
For every technological leap forward in the last 20 years, there's been a major leap in irritation too. Yes, iPods mean you can carry your entire record collection in your backpocket. It also means - because those ear buds bleed sound - that you're forced to listen to irritating bleeps and clicks from someone else's appalling music if you're sitting next to them on the bus.
Yes, the cellphone maybe useful for emergencies, but it also means you're available to the boring at all times of the day and night. These are the same bores whose own phones have "novelty" ringtones that make you want to commit murder.
Technology has also inflicted needless obsolescence (how many songs have you owned on LP, CD and MP3?), too much information (internet), too many damn passwords (computers, ATMs, phone systems, credit cards), headaches (from cheap but powerful stereos owned by the tone-deaf), cars you can't fix (don't ever look under the bonnet), too many remotes (which one operates the toaster again?), know-it-alls who don't know anything (but have a blog and PhD in googling), a perfect picture but nothing to watch (HD TV) ...
Oh dear. I seem to be ranting. Away, I'm going to have to give up sushi. Otherwise the dudgeon from waiting for people's EFTPOS transactions to be accepted, and my high blood pressure from said dudgeon means I'm destined keel over while queuing for a lunch of rice and seaweed rolls. But if I do, at least I'll have the cash in my wallet for the taxi ride to A&E.
* James Griffin is on strike until Snifters are saved.