A few decades ago, when we thought computers would improve the world instead of destroy it, a computer scientist was discussing the possibility of a new machine that would automatically give the correct answer in any argument.

This person thought this was a good idea, as if people really, really wanted the correct answer. I may not be representative of human society as a whole, but I don’t think I’m significantly more evil. And in most arguments I get into, I’m not as concerned about being right—I already know I’m that—as I am about winning.

Back in my extreme youth,  the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog featured the “world’s first” kitchen computer. Its creators seemed unaware of what goes on in kitchens. Their design never figured in the chocolate syrup, dustings of flour, dribbles of oil, crustings of powdered sugar, smears of egg yolk and glue of egg white that inexorably accumulate like slow-growing glaciers on everything that sits on the counter; which bring ants that would fall into a computer, carrying all that food prep detritus into its nether regions—SIZZ! CRICKLE! BAMM! WHOP POP clankety clank clank. Grrrrrz. 

Silence.

In those benighted days, the public internet did not exist. This “computer’‘ was basically a large recipe container—what we called a “cookbook,” supplemented by a calculator—which we called a “calculator.” For $17,000, which was in that day enough for four years of Ivy League school or a llama farm in the Andes—or might have been; when I tried to look up “llama ranch cost in the Andes in the 1970s,” the internet offered me “Cost Benefit of Organized Drainage Stewardship Practices Project” which frankly wasn’t helpful at all. 

As useful as this was for comedy writers, no one seems to have actually bought one. Proving that in at least one thing, people in the olden days were not idiots. Why, we made fun of the “short-fingered vulgarian” today’s citizens (well, for now) elected president.

I have since found that the internet can be very handy when trying to figure out what to cook for dinner when I have no imagination. From the couch in the living room, I plug in some ingredients and voila! Tonight’s dinner: turkey taquitos with garlic crema. But I digress. 

Years went by (OMG IT’S BEEN HALF A CENTURY!); inventions came and went. In 1993, user experience (UX) professionals came into existence to play with the magic things the geeky guys made, assuming they could envision how their eventual users would use them.

Those not in the “born into computer and internet” demographic were just letting the little ones play with their little video games in the rec room, away from grownup affairs. We were answering and speaking on phones when they rang and watching important network TV, blithely illiterate about and oblivious to the impending ubiquity of computer technology. 

Maybe we had tried to stay current with current pop culture and all it entailed, but sometime in the ‘90s when those boy bands showed up, it just got wearisome. We were not keeping up with whatever those computer people were making, any more than we tried to decipher the slang each new youth generation spontaneously begot.

Which was fine, until it wasn’t. Computer guys were taking over the world but not realizing that not everyone understood the dialect.

For instance, say you are on a website trying to buy something, and you have to fill in some blanks, answer some questions. The web designers might sneak the “enter” button at the bottom of the screen. But anyone over 40 has blown up their typeface to THIS SIzE so they can read it without glasses. Their magnified screen has cut off the bottom of the webpage; they don’t know there’s more page they need to scroll down to, to finish paying for goods. So they can’t complete their order, and get cranky and want to take a nap.  

Guess those UX people figure: Don’t worry about those old people, they’ll be dead soon anyway. (Don’t be flattered if I let you ahead of me in the grocery line.)

We boomers shouldn’t have to learn new skills. Until those whippersnappers with their DOS and their HTML and their C++ came along, we were pretty sure we already knew EVERYTHING. Well, everything but Korean boy bands of the ‘90s, which come up way too often in trivia games.