Old Technology in Fiction Can be Distracting

While mopping through ketchup during my lunch break, I’ll often have one of Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series in front of me. Detective Kinsey Malone has a gun but hates to use it. She drives an old VW Beatle. She likes men but has trouble loving them. She's also not above breaking and entering if it will help the case.

And as far as I know (I'm only up to Q), she's stuck in the 1980s.

Picture it: a rainy night. The car won't start. The shadows close in. The angry suspect doesn't want Kinsey on his tail. As the danger increases, Kinsey makes a mad dash for the phone booth across the street. As the bad guy's footsteps come nearer, she closes the folding glass door behind her, puts down the gun, and rifles through her bag looking for change so she can use the pay phone.

I don't like picturing Kinsey in the 80s. I want to picture her now. It really annoys me when she types her final report on a manual typewriter.

Kinsey should have a cell phone and a laptop. But Grafton has made a conscious decision to set these novels in the 80s so the storylines flow together better. I suppose it could be distracting if at the end of one book it is 1986 and at the beginning of the next, it's two weeks later and 2007 (I’m reading another book about relativity and space time, but that’s not the subject here).

I suppose it's just my quirk to deal with, but I'm really distracted by old technology in books, movies, and TV.

In the movie Broadcast News, the workaholic network newspeople run through the hallways carrying huge video cassettes. If Holly Hunter is such hot stuff, why doesn't she just download the video digitally? I know, I know, the movie was made in 1987 when high tech meant having video in cassettes instead of on those giant reel-to-reels.

I think part of the problem is that technology changes so quickly. Our gadgets come and go out of date before our popular fiction does. Case in point, video cassettes or no, William Hurt is hot in this movie.

Quick poll: who still uses a fax machine? I don't think Kinsey even has that option. She is always mailing something (you know, with an envelope and stamp) and waiting several days for a response.

If the book or movie is old enough, it’s less distracting and more amusing. For example, in the 1957 film, Desk Set, with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, a computer occupying several rooms threatens to take over the company. When the giant machine malfunctions, it spits thousands of paper cards all over the place. The lesson, of course, is that computers can't replace people.

At least in the 1950s they couldn't. Now I'm not so sure.

Before my very eyes, technology is changing. When just, like, five years ago, I heard a prediction that the internet and television would morph together, I thought, "What do I give up? My computer or my TV? Well, it won't happen for a while yet."

But it's happening. I just installed a little contraption which picks up the signal from my wireless router (or at least it's supposed to - there are some kinks to work out) and plays content from the internet through the TV/surround sound/home entertainment system.

It doesn't stop there. It's now common to carry your phone, web browser, global positioning system, office assistant application, games, TV, and tons more stuff on one gadget - that can fit in your pocket.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we are living in the future. Think about it. The new stuff we have is more advanced than what we were expecting just a short time ago.

I want to call Kinsey Malone and tell her that it won't be long before she can type her reports and keep her billing records, and instantly gather and send information from all over the world, on one little machine that she keeps in the back seat of her car.

Spence and Kate would never believe it.