I recently finished watching the series Only Murders in the Building. The show stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez as three strangers who come together to create a podcast about a murder that occurred in their Manhattan condo building. At its heart, Only Murders is a comedy, and much of the humor comes from the generational gap between the three main characters. Martin Short and Steve Martin are both in their seventies, while Gomez is twenty-nine. During the series, I found myself relating to Selena Gomez’s character and the frustrations she encounters while working with two “old white guys” who seem socially out of touch and are mystified about how to use current technology. At age fifty-two, I sit firmly in the middle of the characters’ age gap and I found myself rolling my eyes along with Gomez whenever Martin’s character would sign his name at the end of a text message, or when Short’s character would try and fail, to make a pop-culture reference. I feel your pain, Selena, I would think. Those guys are hopeless geezers.
Not long after the final episode of the show, my daughter Emily, who is twenty-eight, visited for a few days. We were sitting on the couch looking through photos on our respective iPhones when I found a great picture of the two of us. “Oh, that’s so cute,” Emily said when I held up my phone. “Airdrop that one to me.” I immediately had a choice to make. I could say “I’ll just text the photo to you,” or “What the hell is Airdrop?” I went with the latter and Emily threw her head back onto the couch. “Where have you been for the last ten years?”
During Emily’s visit we went to Jianna for lunch. We’d been sitting at the bar for a good ten minutes when I complained about the service. “Are they not going to give us a menu?” I asked Emily as she stared at her phone. She sighed loudly and pointed to a tiny square blot laminated on a card sitting on top of the bar. She then shoved her phone in front of my face. “This is the menu, old man. You have to scan the QR code to pull it up.” I nodded. “Oh yeah, I think I’ve heard about that.” Emily sighed again. “Is it safe for you to still be driving?”
Emily’s dig hit a sore spot. Last summer I bought a new car to replace my thirteen-year-old Volkswagen Jetta. I cruised around in the car for weeks, listening to the radio like I had done in the Jetta, until my wife Jess, who is eleven years my junior, showed me how I could use Bluetooth to connect my phone to the car’s infotainment center and access some feature right out of Star Trek: The Next Generation called CarPlay.
Jess and I have the same identical model of iPhone. I use mine to make calls, send texts, check emails, and take photos. Jess uses hers to do the same, although she’s also able to tap on her phone’s screen and control all of the lights in our home, as well as the thermostat and the vacuum cleaner, and stereo speakers. She can monitor the washer and dryer, and view the feeds from the security cameras installed around our house.
“The future!” I always exclaim when Jess shows me some feature or service my phone offers that I know nothing about. Jess invariably shakes her head and says, “That option has been around for years.” I straighten up and say, “Well, guess what? I’ve been around for years too.” And I’m afraid it’s starting to show.
