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“Who was that masked man?”
— Often spoken at the end of “The Lone Ranger” TV and radio shows
One long-ago sweltering summer night in Seymour, a salesman sat in our living room. He wasn’t just selling books; he was peddling the concentrated wisdom of humanity, bound in majestic, burgundy volumes, gold-lettered with “Encyclopedia Britannica.”
For his closing pitch, the door-to-door entrepreneur leaned in with the confidence of a magician who possessed every secret of the universe.
“Ask me a question, son,” he said, looking at 9-year-old me while holding up his book of knowledge for all to see. “Any question at all. I have the answer right here.”
My dad nodded, hinting that he favored the treasure trove of unlocked mysteries to grace our living room. So, I took a breath and fired the ultimate 1950s curveball: “What was the Lone Ranger’s real name?”
The poor guy didn’t just stumble; he went into a full-scale intellectual tailspin. He stammered, as his fingers frantically rummaged through the “L” and “R” volumes … even the “K” hoping for some clue under “kimosabe.”
He likely prayed for a lifeline that just wasn’t there.
My father, possibly pitying the man who had been defeated by a fictional masked man and a grade-school kid, bought the books anyway.
The Lone Ranger’s identity remained a mystery that night. But hey, we now owned twentysomething volumes of heavyduty paperweights to show for it.
Fast forward 53 years to 2010, when Britannica printed its final physical volumes. That ended a 244-year run as the “go-to” source for people who had lots of shelf space and very strong lower backs. It still exists today, but only as an online source. My own transition to the digital age has been equally dramatic. Back in the early 1980s, I famously declared, “I’ll never need to know how to operate a computer; just bring me the printouts to read.” Those words have since aged worse than yesterday’s restaurant leftovers. Now a card-carrying citizen of cyberspace, my dependance on devices is frankly somewhat humbling.
Giving up precious paper, my income is a digital ghost that graces my bank account via direct deposit. My bills are paid by invisible imps on the internet. And cash has been replaced by that small piece of plastic I lose every time I turn around.
I shop for things I can’t find locally and expect them to arrive on my porch before I’ve even finished the checkout process. I can “visit” more friends and family in a single afternoon on social media than I used to see in a year of Sunday drives.
My entire life now travels in my pocket, even to the doctor’s waiting room, where it saves me from having to read a 2017 issue of People magazine for the third time. Speaking of doctors, my medical records are a heartbeat away on a patient portal. I can find more information about my health in 60 seconds than a stressed physician could provide in a 10-minute consultation — plus, I get answers to all the questions I was too intimidated to ask in person.
However, having the world at my fingertips has been a double-edged sword at times. When “the good old ways” failed, it was a minor inconvenience. Missed a call? They’ll call back. If a check got lost in the mail, I just wrote another one. But today, if my device so much as blinks, I develop a tension headache that would make an Excedrin commercial feel like a spa retreat.
Yet, some people complain about “wasting too much time on devices,” and I agree. We’ve abandoned face-to-face visits for impersonal nonstop thumbing on screens. There is, however, a certain magical value in the speed. A wealth of information that once required a salesman and 24 volumes to access is now available in seconds.
And the best part? The new age of cyber searching finally gave me closure. In the blink of an eye, artificial intelligence told me the Lone Ranger’s real name. It’s John Reid.
Bless you, encyclopedia salesman. If only you could see me now struggling to seize the other secrets AI holds.
