A Remote Possibility

                          … the more confusing technology becomes, the more comfortable I am with death. 
                     Because when I’m dead, it won’t matter that I can’t turn on the TV.  –Kristin van Ogtrop
 
Technology has gotten so far ahead of me that it is not remotely possible that I will catch up.  I think the last major innovation in technology that I truly understood and still know how to use is the Post-It note. 
 
When I was young, “remote” meant that something was far away like the moon or that something was improbable like becoming a rock star.  But now much of our daily lives is remote.  We have remote controls, remote access, remote learning, remote health care, and remote work. Remote is here, there, and everywhere.  Ironically, connectivity is making us more remote. 

It seems that everywhere can be accessed from a person’s living room. The couch, which once symbolized the examination of one’s interior life, is the new symbol of the remote world.

I find all of this confusing in theory as well as in practice.  My remote devices are covered with buttons and apps that operate who-knows-what.  I press the “on” button and algorithms get busy making choices for me.  Technology has gotten inside my brain, spies on my activities, tracks my location, and listens to my conversations in order to recommend  videos, music, movies, and most of all—advertisements.  My phone auto-corrects my text messages so that I am never really sure that the message I sent was what I intended to express.  All of this adds to my self-doubt and frustration.

Recently, I received an automatic text message from my doctor’s office asking, “Have you arrived yet?”  What?! I was still in the shower!  When I did arrive, there were new signs posted that parking was no longer free and must be paid for with an app.  I had no idea what to do next.  I turned to the only remote relationship I have ever trusted:  prayer.  But that didn’t seem to be working.  I wondered if I was behind the times on that too.  Is God on Facebook now?  Can I still reach him if I am not on Facebook? And if I am not on Facebook, can he still like me? And what are his statistics?  How many friends does he have?  And is he still the influencer he used to be?  It was not a helpful flow of thought for dealing with a parking crisis. 

Even as I feared that I might die in the parking lot trying to figure out how to pay for my space, it occurred to me that my phone may have lured me to the remotest place possible.  As I circled the block chanting the F-word, I had to accept that this was not just a parking dilemma but an existential crisis:  God may no longer be in charge.  And so I did the most technologically advanced thing I could think to do.  I screamed into my phone:  “Hey, Google!  Am I in hell?”