True Innovation

David Sax's "End The Innovation Obsession" in The New York Times is about what I expect from a man who wrote the book The Revenge Of Analog. But here's the thing: Getting the usual from David Sax is awfully damn good.

Sax isn't a Luddite (though that term maligns and misrepresents the true Luddites) but believes innovation does not always have to involve electricity, printed circuits, or the internet. The Revenge Of Analog describes how people are learning that tactile, analog, human tools are often superior to ideas we've been sold by businesses. At the very least, the true revenge of analog is its coexistence with digital.

"End The Innovation Obsession" gets at this idea that new and old, analog and digital, traditional and newly invented tools can and should coexist. We should doubt that newer is always better:

"We are told that innovation is the most important force in our economy, the one thing we must get right or be left behind. But that fear of missing out has led us to foolishly embrace the false trappings of innovation over truly innovative ideas that may be simpler and ultimately more effective."

Not everything that glitters is gold and we shouldn't be magpies attracted to every shiny thing. (Thought it turns out magpies aren't interested in shiny things.)

We are better served by testing new things against tradition. There was a time when Robert Moses' new and whiz-bang ideas about traffic seemed the one true way. Sixty years later I live in a city divided and scarred by Interstate 81.

"It took more than 50 years evidence, accidents and political courage to realize what a colossal mistake the Moses approach was and to begin to undo that with proven ideas in people-centric urban planning that aim to bring cities back to those who live in them."

Still, it's not about rejecting new ideas. I'm typing this on a Chromebook rather than my old manual typewriter or fountain pen to more efficiently get it online. I have however been listening to records on the turntable while composing this. I'm combining the old and new and choosing tools based on the task I've set for myself. I'm practicing what Sax describes as "reflective innovation" rather than rejecting technology as the term Luddite now implies.

"This type of reflective innovation requires courage, because it calls into question the assumption that new is necessarily better" (emphasis mine).

Sax argues for a "human-centric future that reflects where we've been, what we've learned and how we actually want to live." Living this way requires rejecting some technologies because they fail to serve and embracing traditional tools and ways of living that work well. Sometimes that kind of living gets leads to some name-calling and derision.

Me, I'm a proud Luddite even as I finish typing this on my Chromebook and prepare to post it on the internet. I'm not after any kind of revenge and I'm past the innovation obsession. It's all about what works well and feels good. It's about living as human-centric life. Innovation isn't just waiting out there in the future. More and more I'm finding it in the careful sifting of the past.

Happy New Year

There are all sorts of parties and gatherings happening tonight. We're not at any of them. Instead, the four of us — my wife and daughters and I — are in the kitchen making appetizers and other silly foods. The dog eagerly awaits any drops. Our youngest girl is rolling sushi, something she taught herself while school has been out. The older girl is eating bacon-wrapped scallops, something she learned at a very young age. My wife and I are floating in and out of different food prep, dish washing, and occasional kisses and smiles at how lovely this all is.

In school I often have kids write about wants versus needs. This evening fits both of those requirements. I easily get lost in things I want and forget simpler pleasures. I'm not saying that I have to focus on family and love every second, but here at the end of 2018 I am content, happy, thrilled to be spending the evening as a family, just the four of us (and the dog and cats). I'm ending the year in love.

There have been times when I've really forgotten how important my family is. I'm not proud of that but I'm not too ashamed either. Forgetting allowed me to come back. I'm looking around this kitchen at one daughter who will soon go away to college, another daughter full-grown but naive and childlike in the ways I love, and my wife who is cancer-free and healthy, totally in love with her girls, and still somehow the same woman I fell in love with so long ago on the Oswego shore of Lake Ontario.

Mine is a good life. 2018 was a pretty good year. I remember tough times but they were far outweighed by good times, love, and warmth. 2019, for whatever reasons, already feels like a great year before it has begun. It probably has to do with the company I'm keeping on the eve of 2019's beginning.

Happy New Year to all of us. To mess with John Lennon's lyric, let's make it a good one without any fear.

Why Are You Here?

In bed Sunday morning at quarter to eight I felt anxious that I was late. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, but the feeling rose in me nonetheless. I closed my eyes tight but darkness made the anxiety stronger. Then I asked it a question:

        Why are you here?

Yeah, I talked to my anxiety. Usually I battle it, push against it, try to tamp it down. I try to stop anxiety, kick it in the knees. What else is there to do with something I fear? These things rarely work but are the habits I've developed. Today I took a different tack. I talked with it the way I want people to talk with me.

        Why are you here?

In case you're worried, my anxiety doesn't reply. There is however a child-like voice in me that said, I don't know. And with that my anxiety began to drain away. It didn't disappear in a flash but I felt it ebbing. Having asked the question, gotten something of an answer, I opened my eyes and felt ready to get out of bed. I had writing to do.

One Last Stocking Stuffer

Dad used to do my brother's and my Christmas stocking stuffers. He shopped at hardware and dollar stores, often duplicating gifts year to year. Duct tape and black electrical tape. Utility razor blades, glue, picture hooks, and Velcro. Almost every year I opened a scraper and a tire pressure gauge. A can of WD-40 filled the top of my stocking nearly every year.

My brother and fill each other's stockings with Dad gone the last three Christmases. This year I asked for duct tape, glue, razor blades, and pads for chair legs. No scrapers and pressure gauges, but I needed WD-40. I filled my brother's stocking with Crazy Glue, a pocket tape measure, chrome polish and other things Dad would have bought including a tiny can of WD-40 but he forgot mine. He apologized. I told him not to worry.

Yesterday I took Mom for coffee. I sipped my Americano while updating her phone and showing her how to read notifications. Mom is better than all her friends with her iPhone but needs occasional tutorials and phone maintenance. We chatted while working that through, stopped at the liquor store to get bourbon cream for her afternoon cocktails, and went back to her house where I helped put away some boxes, emptied dehumidifiers, and replaced the battery of a chirping smoke detector in her basement. (Mom worried the chirp was a mouse. A very regular and electronic mouse. Those are the worst kind.)

She had a fresh battery upstairs. I took it down to the basement and snapped it in. After testing the smoke detector I took a moment in Dad's workshop looking around to feel his presence. Mostly I felt absence. On the workbench was a can of WD-40. It was full like it had never been used. I held it for a moment maybe a minute then took it upstairs where I said goodbye to Mom, went out to my car, and drove home.

Before starting to make dinner, I texted a picture of the can to my brother: "Dad got me one last stocking stuffer." I hit send and stared at the message smiling with my eyes fogging over, my breath catching. I sniffed and set the phone down on the kitchen table, its screen still on. I cut vegetables for soup. The onions had me crying.