Bigger fingers and smaller buttons

January 2nd, 2008

I have only one new year’s resolution to make for 2008, and it is to not let my fingers get any larger. Increasing or decreasing digit size usually requires something drastic, so I figure this is finally going to be a resolution I can keep.

Basically, I can’t afford to let my fingers get bigger, because buttons keep getting smaller. There was a time when electronics had knobs large enough to hang your clothes on, and a telephone was so imposing you could dial it with your big toe if you had to. Now gadgets, keypads and controls come with such tiny buttons that a ham-handed lump such as myself has no hope of using them for anything other than mashing. It’s as if the heavy-handed are being discriminated against. Using scissors was difficult enough, but we the pickle-fingered managed to adapt in society.

There is no way a person who can’t even pick a dime up off a table is ever going to function in the future if machines and their buttons continue to get smaller and smaller. Forget cell phones, tiny cameras or text messaging. I’ll be lucky to operate a remote control in the coming year. We are in the middle of a cruel cycle right now, where portion sizes keep increasing, and our favourite toys keep getting smaller.

Not even Jules Verne could have predicted that hamburgers would be larger than telephones. It’s a vicious circle, but one I am forcing myself to live with; because, let’s face it, who doesn’t love a big hamburger. I had a car in high school that fit an entire case of beer under the hood.

Today, I could duct tape four empty cases together and park my car inside it as a garage. With every passing year, I keep getting bigger while everything around me continues to shrink. Experts call this progress. Not only is every hand-held device getting smaller, but they are getting more complex as well. Lured in by words such as “upgrade” and “enhancement,” we are being forced to learn and relearn complicated routines, just to do the little things that used to take no effort at all.

It hardly seems like progress when the devices invented to make lives simpler, actually make it more frustrating. Someone needs to sit down with the queen nerd in the great nerd hive, and rethink the direction we are taking. The way all these electronic gadgets capture, record and transmit information, it won’t be long before everyone will be able to buy and install a back-up brain, capable of storing all the day-to-day information they need to know. It will hold the phone numbers and pictures of everyone I know, update my bank balance and air miles, and tell me what my favourite song or colour is. It will buy my gas and groceries, and leave my real brain wiped clean for such important tasks as trying to pick the next American Idol.

No doubt, some soft-skinned techo-wizard is holed up inside your nearest nerdery right now, working like mad to be the lucky genius who produces the first voice-activated back-up brain to fit directly inside the human ear. It will probably be annoying at first, but I can’t stick my big, fat fingers in my ears right now as it is, so why worry. With a bit of luck and hard work, I will adapt. Again.