The teenage technology bug

A wise man once said that technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology.

And if I needed indisputable evidence to support this hypothesis, I need look no further than to the recent shenanigans of my two teenage sons.  Their bewildering story perfectly illustrates the demanding claim of technology on our lives.

I’ll try to keep it simple. 

Once upon a time, there were two boys smitten by the technology bug.

The elder one bought his home in an Xbox and loved it from the word ‘play’.  And why wouldn’t he?  After all, it was clever enough to remember every goal he ever scored, as well as every alien he ever managed to shoot out of the sky.  It remembered the good times and the bad; and even, on occasion, it unlocked secret challenges that made my son’s friends go ‘Whoah!’ and ‘Cool!’. 

The technology bug was loved by my son and it loved him back – looking beyond the boyish face behind the controls and showering him with praise, as a world class athlete, master tactician, and hero for troubled times.

Until the day someone broke into his bedroom, unplugged the Xbox, and walked away with both the bug and a ‘piece’ of my son.

His younger brother, meanwhile, looked on and laughed.  He had the bug too, but it never left the box in his pocket.   That way, he would claim, if anyone ever asked (such as during a tedious maths lesson or on the way home from school), he could easily whip it out and quickly demonstrate its mains features. With the phone in his pocket, he was a showman , an entertainer, and literally ‘King of the Apps’.

Until the day someone walked into school with the latest touch screen bug box with 8 megapixel camera, video call functions, and wifi to boot.  At that very moment, it was as if someone had stolen his crown and walked away with both his admirers and a ‘piece’ of his pride.

Both boys had loved and lost; but they weren’t going to leave it at that.

Which is precisely when it started getting complicated.  Very complicated.

Another Xbox arrived, but it simply wasn’t the same.  It couldn’t remember anything – none of the battles fought, none of the goals scored, and none of the secret routes or hidden keys.  So it was quickly sold for a different kind of box – as if that would make any difference. 

Like the replacement Xbox before it, the PS3 sat in the corner of the room, unloved and unplayed.

So it too was eventually sold and another Xbox bought in its place.  Except that one never arrived, so yet another was purchased in its place.

And it was pretty much the same for his brother.  Month after month, every time I saw him, he’d shyly admit to a different phone in his pocket.  Or should I say ‘phones’ – for sometimes he’d have two or three of them running, and ringing, at the same time.  The simple business of calling him became impossibly complicated.   In his mind, though, phones weren’t really about making calls.

To him, I remain so 20^th Century in this respect.

And as I think about how relieved I am to be older and wiser and freer than my teenage sons, I walk in the Apple store to take a look at the new iPad.

That’s my bug.