When Technology Fails

What to do...What to do

I have a few avocations. One of them is an extension of a former career; I host a couple radio talk shows for my mostly volunteer Island media conglomerate, Voice of Vashon. That ‘volunteer’ part means that I not only host these shows, but I also produce them, engineer them, edit and post them appropriately. Some 50 other volunteer radio hosts, mostly music show deejays, do the same.

Sometimes the technology gets complicated, like when I want to interview someone far away on Zoom. That means I’m juggling the Zoom call, an audio recording program, the multi-wired camera connection, microphone levels of my own and on Zoom and the power (or lack thereof) of the local Internet. For most 20-somethings, this is a piece o’ cake. For me, it’s sometimes an opportunity to stretch my brain (read f*king nightmare), AND I’m supposed to conduct a thoughtful and entertaining interview while my brain is split in these multiple different directions. Yes, listen to my guest and craft insightful questions for him or her. To say it’s stressful is a gross misrepresentation of the state of my mind during these happy hobby moments.

Today, I did all those things. I even conducted a meaningful and entertaining interview with a famous person. But the technology failed me. I completely lost my famous guest’s voice. Why? If I knew that I would have fixed it. Nothing I tried in my feeble understanding of the vicissitudes of audio technology brought this man’s lovely, informative and pithy comments to life. Technology failed. I failed.

I like to think of failure as educational, and this failure may someday be educational, but I’m still baffled by what went wrong, and now I have to admit my failure to the world. So, there’s the lesson from failure and the accompanying humiliation. But wait! What do I do with this lingering sense of shame? What’s the lesson here?

As I ruminate, I am reminded of how dependent we humans today are on technology for many of the most important aspects of our lives like work, hobbies, even our most important human relationships. We use technology to get us off the hook when we can make a computer do the work for us (AI anyone?) or simply organize a project. We rely on technology to teach us the basics of our hobbies (You Tube classes on everything from watercolor painting to taxidermy). Most egregious of all, we rely on tech to stay ‘in touch’ with friends, family, our political leaders. We use technology to express ourselves in anonymous numbers to support our favorite politician, push our favorite cause or even save baby elephants in far off exotic lands...oblivious to who might really be collecting our cash or our demographic ‘numbers.’

Yes, I realize, we are really just numbers in most of these urgent campaigns to save, promote, expose...whatever. Still, we feel as though we’ve done something important . But when technology fails us, what do we do? Are we capable of pulling back and writing a real letter on real paper? Meeting with our colleagues In Real Time (IRT) to solve a collective problem? Sharing face-to-face time with a friend to hear their voice, observe their body language, assess their health by the color of their skin? Check out their current hair color? Listen beyond the first sentence...?

Right...we wouldn’t likely get as much done as we do with the help of technology, but here’s the big question – am I still using it or is it using me?

The truth is that my techno-humiliation today was caused, in part by the technology and in part by my embarrassment at being a techno-dweeb, at falling behind in the digital race. I couldn’t save my interview. So, what did I do?

I drove my car to a nearby public forest. I took a walk in the woods. I actually hugged a couple trees, allowed my heart to feel the running of their sap and rested my face on the cool moss covering their North (?) sides. I will admit I was grateful no one saw me. I’ll also admit that it calmed me down dramatically. As I held each tree in my embrace, I looked up through their soft, fluttering branches to the brilliant blue sky and I took several deep breaths. I started feeling my connection to these real living beings. There was no hardware, no keyboard, no ‘error’ messages or funky little bells to tell me I’d messed up...or even that I’d ‘made it.’ My connection didn’t require power (the electrical kind), yet it felt stronger and more genuine even than my lovely unrecorded conversation with the famous person I lost.

I think this is currently called “forest bathing,” and I get the appeal.

This won’t be the last time I fail technologically because I will continue trying. But it also won’t be my last forest bath. In fact, this may become a habit. I might do this the next time the news of genocide overwhelms me or I see another notch in the gun belt of our autocratic revolutionaries. When I feel frustrated by my helplessness in the face of it all, I might just hug a tree.