Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Maureen Ebel, 77, described losing her life savings in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme—and how she learned to “play the hand you’re dealt.” This week, the great essayist Joseph Epstein, 88, kvetches about dealing with technology in his 80s.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The author of this maxim is a justly forgotten Frenchman named Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. I write “justly,” for no words I know contain less truth than these. Plus ça change, plus ça change—the more things change, the more things change—is more like it. And no greater change has come about than the change toward the close of my lifetime—I’m 88, if you must know—brought about by the advent of personal computers, or what is known, collectively, as the digital age.
A few contemporaries of my acquaintance took a pass on computers, but I, a writer, a scribbling man, was in no position to do so. For so much in the realm of writing today relies on computers, not least the sending back and forth of manuscripts. To be sure, the computer has brought me many benefits. As a writer, I find revising compositions on my computer beats all previous modes of revision. Scores—make that hundreds—of times, Google has proved a splendid aide-mémoire. I’ve never looked to the computer for my main source of news, but I have found, and continue to find, many interesting items on The Washington Free Beacon, Substack, and elsewhere.
Yet the negative aspects of so-called digital culture are quite as great. Every time I turn on my computer I am directed to connect to iCloud. I have tried to connect to iCloud perhaps 30 times, but always without success. No more success than I have had in bringing Backblaze, the storage platform, up to date on my computer. Just yesterday I attempted to scan a document, and was informed that my scanner is not connected to my computer. Last week it was connected. Who in the hell, I wonder, disconnected it? When I am asked if I wish to update my computer, I invariably take a pass. Backdating it sounds much more attractive to me.
I listen to no podcasts, check only one blog, and steer well clear of any social media on my computer. I was for a time on LinkedIn, but find I am no longer able to connect with the occasional person who wants to link-in with me. Instead I am asked to check my user name and reset my password, which, when I attempt to do so, doesn’t seem to work. When asked for my username, it is now all I can do not to insert Enough Already, adding an email address that reads: screw.it@fmail.keepcom.
How much of all this—computer troubles, car and television worries, shopping difficulties—is owing to my being an older player? A lot, I suspect.
My wife, who is my contemporary, has given up on computers. I have inherited her Apple laptop, but she has forgotten the password allowing me to get on it. I keep a small red leather folder, given to me by the Mark Cross leather-goods company, with my all too various passwords in it—passwords that number no fewer than 32—but this one isn’t in it. I called AppleCare, and spent roughly an hour on the phone with a woman who, in the end, wasn’t able to help. I shall have to bring the laptop to an Apple store, in the hope that it can supply me with a new password. Ah, me, I worry about the day, perhaps not far off, when we shall all require passwords to use the toilets in our own apartments.
It’s not only in dealing with my computer that I frequently find myself stymied. I used to trade in my car every three years, but today I am driving an 18-year-old car, a black Jaguar S-Type. True, my Jaguar has only 57,873 miles on it, and its design is, I believe, more elegant than more recent models. But the real reason I have kept this car, and expect it, as the English say, to see me out, is that the technology of more recent cars, engineered more and more around computers, is more than I require or expect to be able to deal with. I prefer to put a key in my ignition to start my car, I’d rather not consult a computer to change gears, and I don’t require a voice to tell me to turn left at the stoplight. In short, I am wary—make that fearful—of the new computer-driven automobile technology, and will continue where possible to avoid it.
My 11-year-old Sony television set not long ago went out. I bought a new Samsung set, and was immediately hit with new ways of saving programs; of using my DVD player; and of connecting to Netflix, Prime, and Apple TV+ shows that I had earlier mastered tuning into on my dear old Sony set. So complex have things become that an amiable gent from Geek Squad had to come out to install this new television set, at the charge of $100. Everything may be up to date in Kansas City, as the old song has it, but it sure isn’t with Joseph Epstein.
I do not often order things online, which, I note from the packages that arrive in the lobby of our building, my younger neighbors do much more frequently than do my older neighbors. I do order occasionally from Amazon and perhaps a bit more from AbeBooks, the used-book dispenser. But apart from these two companies, I have not had much success ordering online. Two weeks ago I attempted to order two shirts from Jos. A. Bank, the men’s clothing store. After roughly 40 minutes on my computer, which sent me back innumerable times to my iPhone to reset my password, username, and everything but my hairstyle, I gave up and called customer service to place my order. A customer service agent took 20 or so minutes to respond to my call, leaving me listening to jumpy music and a robot voice coming on every 40 seconds or so imploring me to stay on the line and reminding me how important my call was to them.
How much of all this—computer troubles, car and television worries, shopping difficulties—is owing to my being an older player? A lot, I suspect. For along with my wariness of the new technology brought in with the digital age, there is a certain nagging element of resentment. Why do I have to put up with all these computer shortcuts, which in my case usually turn out to be longcuts? Now in my late 80s, I feel, correctly, that time is running out for me, and I have no wish to spend any of it trying to connect with iCloud or waiting for an agent from customer service to pick up the phone and answer my call.
One of the temptations of old age is to view one’s earlier years as better. I’m not sure they were. But they were surely simpler. In Somewhere Towards the End, her excellent memoir on aging, Diana Athill writes: “We tend to become convinced that everything is getting worse simply because within our own boundaries things are doing so. We are becoming less able to do things we would like to do, can hear less, see less, eat less, hurt more, our friends die, we know that we ourselves will soon be dead . . . It’s not surprising, perhaps, that we easily slide into a general pessimism about life, but it is very boring and it makes dreary last years even drearier.” Ms. Athill invokes us to “not waste our time grizzling.”
Along with my wariness of the new technology brought in with the digital age, there is a certain nagging element of resentment.
A new word to me, “grizzling,” meaning “expressing tiresome dissatisfaction or resentment.” In lodging my complaints about the complications brought into life by the digital age, I hope I am not myself merely grizzling. I realize that I have much to be grateful for, not least, to begin with, for attaining old age. That I have been able to do so in decent health and able to continue to labor at the work I love can only be viewed as a double bonus. Every night I go to sleep, as the song instructs, counting my blessings, and awake with thanks for the gift of another day.
Still, yet, but, however, and nevertheless, I continue to find irksome the barriers put in the way of this alte kocker by digital culture in its various forms. “Time,” as Theophrastus says, “is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” The older one grows, especially, say, after reaching the age of 70, the more precious time seems. Not that I, for one, do not waste entire days watching sports and news and dopey old movies on television, and reading in a desultory way, but at least I waste it my way.
Plus ça change, like the man said, plus ça change, and the more things do change, the less this grizzling old dude likes it. Status quo ante is his ideal, his utopia—an ideal, a utopia, he realizes, he shall never attain in this lifetime.
Joseph Epstein is the author of, most recently, Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life and Familiarity Breeds Content: New and Selected Essays.
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