Sometimes Technology Simplifies

We're making progress towards our departure from one life and our arrival into another. I initiated my retirement process at work by going online and clicking all the appropriate buttons. What used to be a bureaucratic ordeal is now dead-simple.

We took more loads to Goodwill and the Post Office, printing shipping labels here and avoiding the lines at the inaptly named Mt Pleasant Post Office. I used the same web site to reserve a PO box in Upper Jay - we like that post office best; it dates back to the 1800s.

Upper Jay PO

S. packed many boxes this week, far more than I did. The garage is filling up with neatly packed and labelled boxes. Every box is recycled, virtually uncirculated cardboard boxes from the neighborhood recycle facility. In today's wasteful global economy, nearly everything consumed is transported from thousands of miles away, and all that stuff is packed in single-use cardboard boxes. I suppose it's common to actually buy moving boxes - and then thoughtlessly toss them out after one use. I've never bought one but I have tossed out boxes that the moving companies provided. That always felt wasteful even if placed in a recycling bin. It's always satisfying to repurpose instead of buying new, even something as humble as a box.

I listed the trusty Subaru on Craigslist, getting responses literally minutes later. We sold it - cash in hand, title signed - 28 hours later. On a weekend. That transaction, along with the buying postage, getting a PO box and applying for retirement started me thinking about the advantages of technology. Technology's disadvantages become obvious as you downsize and simplify your life, and it can lead to developing an anti-technology attitude. Technology's advantages are so ubiquitous that we can risk overlooking them.

The Subaru, for example, was purchased on the Internet, S bought it from the original owner in Massachusetts.We listed it for free on Craigslist and the buyer was able to contact us via cell phone, text and email. We used Google Maps to find their house, without a single wrong turn. The buyers researched the car's reliability history online. I was able to find and print out an official SC DMV bill of sale - the DMV requires one to go to their office to physically obtain one, but a local car dealer thoughtfully scanned and uploaded a .pdf. I learned that the bill of sale is critically important in SC, via the Internet.

Compare this to the pre-Internet days. Buying a new car rarely made sense even back then, so the task would be to find a reliable used car at a reasonable price. Readily accessible national listings didn't exist, and certainly not free and none with color photos! Used car prices were published in the Kelley Blue Book, and 40 years ago that book was withheld from the general public. As for reliability, researching maintenance history was a lot more work and you'd have to go to a library or buy magazines. Often those magazine articles were biased because they have conflicts of interest with advertisers. An example is the Chevy Vega, the fifth worst car ever according to Edmonds, and "built with contempt for its buyers". Here's an ad (probably from Motor Trend magazine) for the Chevy Vega...Motor Trend's 1971 Car of the Year. If you based your research on Motor Trend, you'd be in trouble.

Today it's simple to search for firsthand maintenance discussions in online owner forums - every car has its typical weak spots, and the idea is to find a model that has easily repairable ones. Once you figured out what to buy, what was available and how much to pay, you'd start the inspection and haggling phases. Those phases haven't changed much. But instead of asking the owner for directions we just get his address and navigate with GPS, free computer applications linked to vast data centers, cellular data networks and a smartphone.

Then you had to get the money. Typically that involved a trip to the bank - meaning a transaction on a Saturday afternoon (such as ours) was impossible. Today one can withdraw thousands of dollars from a series of ATMs. So, what used to be a several day process can now be done in 28 hours.

Technology often burdens society - weapons, energy waste, complexity and social isolation are examples. It's easy to complain about it, but there are advantages - including, perhaps, blogging.