Will everybody be talking into the back of their wrists? It’s the big new thing and I’m not even comfortable with the old-style stuff. The whole Bluetooth thing threw me off, not knowing if that person talking nearby said something to me or to the party at the other end of their phone conversation. I actually said something stupid to a nearby woman (this was early on in the Bluetooth timeline, honest…), like “What’s that you say?” or “Were you talking to me?”
Of course, she wasn’t.
She had one of those Bluetooth ear-things and I had never seen one before. Obviously, she didn’t even respond to my question – she was busy talking to her imaginary friend. That’s what it seemed like to me. She was talking to someone at the other end of an invisible connection and I was old-school. If she’d only had a hand-set. It’s funny how holding a device to your ear legitimizes talking aloud in public with no one nearby.
By now, you’ve seen the commercial for the latest thing. Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio. If you haven’t, you can see it by clicking here.
It has taken us nearly 70 years to catch up with Mr. Gould’s vision, but we seem to be in an invention conundrum. We want to watch our videos and read our eBooks on screens the size of elementary school blackboards, but we want the device to be thin and light and snap-able and easy to tuck into our pocket (granted – the pocket has to be the size of a mail-carrier’s bag).
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear super-duper wrist radio/telephone/go-go-gadget has met with mixed early reviews. History, though, is on its side. The popular culture is filled with references to people talking into their wrists to contact the police captain, the Starship’s transporter room, Inspector Gadget’s cohorts, or the alien’s mother ship (foreign language model). Samsung has every reason to believe we’ll want to strap a thing on our wrist and start jabbering (oh – and also have the current time available at a glance).
Chester Gould was amazingly ahead of his time. Or maybe inventors are coming up with their stuff based on his old comic strips. He had an orbiting space-station thing with bold black lettering on the side identifying it as a POLICE vehicle. We’ve got SWAT vans and space stations, but so far we haven’t got a combination of the two.
I liked the comic strip back then. I was a kid too young to drive. My neighbor’s older brother had a driver’s license and a car. When you’re young and wrangle a ride into town, it becomes a spending spree. Surely, you remember (or lived within walking distance and don’t know what I’m talking about). In our neighborhood at that time, we didn’t get into town much. When my buddy and I talked his brother into driving us, we pooled our money and went wild. We bought a pizza (had to share it with his brother as a payoff) and a bakery-tin of Divinity, assorted packs of sports cards, and a plastic model of Dick Tracy’s space coupe. Oooh, Space Coupe and Moon Maid. The coolest things we’d ever seen. (Of course, the word “Cool” had not yet been invented back then.)
Just saw the commercial again. Even Fred Flintstone talked to his wrist. The Gould-gadget has pervaded our popular culture, retro-fitted to the stone age.
It turns out, I have an associative memory connected with Dick Tracy and now it’s scaring me. When my neighbor and I sprang for the plastic space coupe model and the tin of Divinity, we assembled the project immediately upon our return home. Maybe it was the fumes from the toxic plastic cement that fixed it in my cranium. We put the coupe together while we ate the Divinity – what has to be one of the sweetest concoctions ever invented. We devoured every last crumb of it.
It was nauseating. And I’m not just talking about our completed glue-blobbed space coupe, finished project. Too much Divinity is not a good thing.
As a result of the associative memories, whenever I see a picture of Dick Tracy, I think of the space coupe and my plastic model. That makes me recall Divinity, that white-colored, sweeter than fudge dessert. And when I think of Divinity I get slightly nauseous.
I worry that if the Samsung Galaxy catches on, I’ll see people talking into their wrists like Dick Tracy, which will make me think of… (you can extrapolate the rest). I’ll see someone talking into their two-way wrist radio/TV and I’ll get nauseous.
When the Weedeater was first introduced, I thought “What great idea!” When that first videotape (predecessor of digital) machine came out, I bought one. Cool, I thought. (The term had been invented by then.) Computers? I might have bought the first one. Google me or check Wikipedia. (I could be wrong.)
It concerns me a little that – at my age – even as a technology-accepting-consumer, this is going to be a tough sell. I’m going to see a random Samsung Galaxy wearer talking into their Dick Tracy style two-way wrist radio/TV and I’m going to experience nausea – or worse. (I might lose my lunch.)
Divinity won’t be a factor, though. Haven’t tasted that sweet confection since that fateful day, way back when.
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