New and Improved Just Isn’t

§  The simple fact is, newer isn’t necessarily better.  § 

I admit it: I truly liked the old-fashioned hand crank windows on cars. They were wonderful. Excellent. Unlike power windows, the mechanism virtually never failed, leaving one to the excruciating necessity of duct-taping heavy plastic over a window to keep out the driving rain or bitter winter winds until time and money finally permitted a trip to the repair shop. And on those rare occasions in which a car became so classic that the crank mechanism did, finally, give way, it was a fairly simple repair. But, more importantly, a person could “crack” the window to just precisely that right point to ventilate a parked car. No pressing the power button up and down, over and over, attempting to get the glass just a smidgen or skoosh further down. Nope. One simply turned the hand crank just a tad until that window was in precisely the right position.

Of course, I am also old enough to recall the miraculous front window vent that was once found in every car. When weather was cool enough to drive with the windows down, passengers in the back seat were never blown right to Oz by a fully lowered front window; one cranked (yes, cranked) the windows down, slid those triangular vents open to a 45-degree angle, and voila! Air circulated around and through both front and back seats without power washing either the  passengers or the driver.

The simple fact is, newer isn’t necessarily better. Take, for instance, heating pads which turn themselves off. Now, having known someone who unwisely used an old-school heating pad without an automatic shut-off—used it overnight and incorrectly, lying on it—and received a bad burn thereby, I understand the sense of the automatic shut-off on a heating pad. The problem lies in the fact that such a shut-off doesn’t allow for personal preference or need. In my experience, just about the time when the heating pad has reached the “Ahhh!” factor, easing a muscle ache or abdominal pain, that’s the moment when the dratted thing powers down completely. And with most models, simply pressing the off button for a few seconds does no good. Nope, a complete reboot is necessary. The user must get up, walk over to the wall plug, fully unplug the cord for at least 60 seconds, and then plug it back in to have the cooled pad start cycling upward to heat once more. That get-up/reach-down/unplug-and-wait motion pretty much undoes any good that the heat had begun doing to a tense or torn muscle. For heaven’s sake, why, oh why, isn’t the user permitted determine an automatic shut-off time that might possibly work for an individual ache?

But then, clothes irons these days operate on much the same principle. (And, yes, unlike the Millies, I do occasionally iron some clothing, especially in the summertime. I appreciate the crisp appearance of a freshly starched and pressed pair of linen slacks or cotton shorts, and a clothes iron wastes far fewer kilowatts of electricity than a dryer cycle.) I understand the concept of not burning one’s house down by leaving the clothes iron on to overheat; I simply don’t comprehend why it must shut off right in the middle of pressing the transfer paper to make a graphic tee.

I had one friend whose country home contained a working, antique hand water pump in kitchen. Although their well-water operated, as most do these days, on an electric pump, the hand pump functioned as backup, and she was not about to have it removed—which proved to be a wise decision during the numerous times that thunderstorms took out the power lines.

Newer is simply not necessarily better—as proven by the reaction every time Microsoft introduces a new version of Windows or Word. People loathe them. They despise them. They hate then so much so that, frequently, even hard sell doesn’t reconcile a tech-battered populace to being forced to learn yet another new version. One site after another pops up online, guiding suffering users to ways around all those irritating and unwanted “new and improved” features. I myself, having upgraded to Word 2016 after years of using 2010, have seriously considered paying a simply outrageous amount of money for a program that will allow me to restore my icons to the old 3-D versions instead of the butt-ugly “clean” icons that Microsoft has now foisted on users. (Where are my “Find It” binoculars? How am I to remember that a right-leaning magnifying glass is “Find”, while a left-leaning one is “Zoom”? How, I ask you?!)

No, newer is simply not necessarily better. And so-called progress is often two giant steps backwards—not one small step for man nor woman, and certainly not a giant leap forward for humankind.

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