Glancing Askance: Clean and Simple

By MARC WOLLIN

The digital elements of our lives continue to improve and astound, with virtually no area untouched. In home entertainment we’ve gone from having just a few options pushed out on a defined schedule to being able to stream an almost endless supply of movies and shows whenever we want. In navigation we’ve gone from paper maps to real-time routing that vectors us around traffic, while also offering options for scenic vs. fuel savings vs. expediency. And in communications we’ve gone from a single hard-wired voice line to multiple mobile pathways enabling us to use voice and text anywhere anytime.

But many of the electronic gizmos we use are not really “digital” so much as analog with a digital overlay. Take your car: the speedometer might report your speed in discrete numbers. But step on the gas and the speed goes up in a non-stop slope (the very definition of analog), while braking does the same in the other direction. That said, my grandfather used to drive digitally before it was a thing; he stomped on the gas and slammed on the brake as if acceleration were an on/off switch.

Many things today fall into the same category. Shopping is analog as you browse from one thing to another even if you do it online. Same for reading a book or watching a movie — you read or watch in a continuous thread whether it’s on a Kindle or laptop. Your vacuum is an analog device continuously slurping up dirt even if it’s a robot. The same goes for your oven as it slowly warms up, even if its controls are made up of multiple buttons and flashing displays. And even if you have Wi-Fi-connectedness and Bluetooth-enablement, your laundry is about as analog as it comes.

So when our washing machine started to smell like its motor was about to explode and we decided it might be better to replace than repair, we were confronted with the modern conundrum of how much upgrade we really wanted. We all face the inevitability of stuff with a relatively long-life breaking down or wearing out, necessitating the need for a new phone or coffee maker or weed-wacker. In some cases going digital may be thrust upon us as an inevitable part of the replacement process. Other times we willfully take the opportunity to take advantage of the latest improvements in that sub-sub-sub specialty. I mean, who knew that there was such a thing as OptimalTEMP ironing technology so as not to burn the ends of your shirt collars?

But like an LED light bulb, often all you want to do is swap something old for something new with no real operational change other than some state-of-the-art efficiencies. And so it was with our washing machine. What we had was analog-ness at its finest, a decade-old machine with big knobs that you pulled or pushed that reverberated with a resounding “thunk.” That experience was fine by us: a simple machine that took in water, soap and soiled garments and spit out clean clothes. What was offered, however, was something else. The ads offered intelligent, smart, digital devices which used sensors and advanced AI to analyze our laundry issues and take control of the task at hand, improve our lives, and give us back time in our day. Almost as an afterthought they also cleaned clothes.

Sure, we’d be happy for it to be more energy efficient and perhaps quieter. But I really don’t need to be able to check my socks from my phone, or talk to my sheets via a hands-free assistant. Thankfully such a thing was available. We got a basic machine that seems to do just fine. It sounds different as the internal workings must have chips vs. gears controlling the process, and there are just two buttons to push, on/off and stop/start. I hesitate to call it a smart analog device as opposed to stupid digital one, but that might just be the best summation.

The laundry expert in our house (not me) has pronounced herself more than satisfied with our choice. It is indeed quieter, seems easy to operate and has a speedy cycle which seems to clean just fine. (A note that despite my mastery of most technology I am still generally prohibited from doing the wash — mix colors and whites with abandon and you get a reputation that’s hard to shake — but as long as I am given specific instructions I am able to assist as needed.) And there is a bonus: since it is not connected to our network, we can rest assured that at least our laundry is unhackable. Unless I do it.

Marc Wollin of Bedford used to do laundry by finding the biggest machine and putting everything in. His column appears weekly via email and online at Substack and Blogspot, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.