I love new stuff. New cars are the best. How can you ever fault that smell. New clothes are nice, if you are into clothes. There is nothing sweeter than a new baseball glove, again, that smell, and they usually last longer than a car. A new home seems to come with a lot of headaches, but what’s not to love? Yep, new stuff is good with the sometimes exception of technology.

I am all for technological advances. They are some of what made this country great. You think of the assembly line, the telephone, phonograph, electricity, the cotton gin, steam engines, and the list can go on and on. I love to see new technology come into every day usage; space age stuff like computers, other electronics, and even ceramics, into autos, microwaves, refrigerators, and dozens of other common things. I love technology in communications, which brings me to the heart of this column. Not all that is new is good.

Change is good. If it weren’t, none of us would ever improve, and I am all for getting better. What I am not in favor of is change for the sake of being able to say, “It’s new.” Just because it is new doesn’t make it better. I have written about smart phones, and this is where “new” begins to rub me the wrong way. Cell phones are wonderful, and I do love my smart phone, and I have acquired a “new and improved” one. I’m telling ya, new doesn’t mean better.  But it is better! It has dual core technology (whatever that is), just like my real computer. That has to be good right? It is, it is wonderful. I am amazed at the things I can do right in the palm of my hand, and in HD no less. There are new accessories to go with the new phone, and I’m telling ‘ya, new does not mean better. One of the accessories I had to have with this new phone, which has more computing power than is required to fly a 747, or send an mission Apollo to the moon, is what is called a “lapdock.” See, new technology, new word; neither necessarily good, nor bad for that matter.

I have written this on the new lapdock, on a real keyboard, not a touch screen where my fat fingers can’t hit the right key. You will see no difference, but there is one.  With all the computing power of this phone, you would think the technology would make my work easier and faster, hence, more productive. That is not the case. New does not mean better.

My trouble with this new stuff is the learning curve. It has taken me hours of trial and error to get everything to work, and I have little confidence in the machine and what it can do. I wrote a document on a program that stores it in the “cloud.” I have a difficult time believing that my document is out there somewhere and I can just get it, send it, and it will get there. I remember when a document in the cloud meant it was being sent airmail.

It was so bad last week that I when I sent an e-mail with an attachment from my new, high-tech, fancy phone, I had to go to my regular laptop computer, which I now consider to be a clunky dinosaur, and send another email with another service to see if the new service found the right document in the ether-sphere, attached it and sent it in a readable form.  It did, and I guess I’m pleased with that, but I have a difficult time trusting something I can’t see.

My grandmother was a very talented seamstress.  She could do anything with fabric, and did it on a treadle type sewing machine. When she started to adapt to electric machines, it was a very steep learning curve for her, and she used the ripper to open many a misaligned seam while increasing my vocabulary. She adapted, and so will I, but in the mean time, productivity will suffer. I am not ripping seams, but trying to save, send and even print a document with this new technology is a challenge.

It seems to me that if you are going to change something, it should make the task it is designed to do easier. If there are additional steps, or I have to spend hours learning how to do what I have been doing for years, then it isn’t easier or better, only fancier. Thank goodness solitaire hasn’t changed. What would I do between paragraphs if they changed it? New isn’t always better.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted, and his other works viewed at www.starchasers.us, or david@starchasers.us.