The Mp3 player is the latest in the great advances in civilization. People’s eyes glaze over with pleasure when they touch and iPod. But I don’t get it.

Technology and the stages of life.

Into each life a time comes when a person doesn’t understand or just doesn’t see the reason for, a piece of technology. For my grandmother it was the vending machine. She just couldn’t figure out how you put coins into it and then got a soda or a bag of potato chips. And she was a woman who could tear down a tractor engine. With my mother, it was the ATM machine. It wasn’t that she couldn’t operate one; she didn’t even try. "What’s the point? We have tellers." The other day, my friend misplaced her ATM card and couldn’t get any cash. This shows how far we have come—she had completely forgotten about tellers. For me it’s the Mp3 or the iPod; I just don’t get it.

They hate my operating system

For starters, both Napster and iTunes and every other music downloading service refuse to deal with me and my perfectly good Windows 98 operating system. Should I get a whole new system when the one I’ve got works just fine? What’s the point? Now I know that Mp3 players are a compression system that reduces bytes while retaining sound that is near CD quality. Note that sneaky little word "near." It is either CD quality or it isn’t.

Who needs that much music?

Mp3 players and iPod brag that they hold lots of songs on little players and you don’t have to mess with CD players and CDs. iPods go for up to $584 but I can listen to my tiny radio and ear phones that cost me 10 bucks at Radio Shack. If I want to really listen to music, I can get real quality CD by turning on my dinosaur stereo system and there’s nothing like it. iPod claims to hold 15,000 songs. Now who on earth needs that much music? It works out to 750 hours or 30 days listening to music day and night. And then there is the time spent downloading the whole thing in the first place.

The brain brake

But the main thing is that I just don’t get it. Inside every brain is a brake that slams down and screeches on a piece of technology. It isn’t pretty, it isn’t rational. I think it’s the first sign of crotchetiness, that blissful state of being grumpy and persnickety for no good reason other than you’re getting older.