We’ve really been inundated with new technologies to make our lives easier and most folks think it’s great. Being the kind of guy who, when he sees the glass of water, he doesn’t see it as half full or half empty, but wonders why he has to drink water instead of some nice juice, or maybe some chocolate milk, my attitude has made me come up with a list of things that technology has ruined for me.

I thought I’d share.

• The “I think I’m having an absurd conversation with a stranger, but not really, yet totally invested in it” syndrome from people wearing those weird ear phones.

I really don’t like the hand-less, Bluetooth phone. I believe it is another example of the government discovering alien technology from the Roswell crash, reverse engineering it and then making a great leap with our technology, like the Ipod. Except these are the low-end products.

“Hey if there are aliens, there are probably alien discount stores, so let’s make a tiny phone knock-off that an alien would buy on the same row with the weird Cheeto canisters. We’ll call it the ‘Blue Tooth,’ which neither looks like a tooth, nor is blue, so we’ll mislead with poor marketing. But seeing that their idea of consumer research is disturbing probes on drunks found wandering empty country roads, this makes perfect sense.”

But this leads to confusing conversations. I’ll be standing in the dairy aisle and someone will walk up and ask, “Do we need egg whites?” There is no one else there, so this question is obviously directed at me. “I don’t know.  What are we making? Or are you asking if we need egg whites in an existential sense? I think I could have a fulfilling and productive life without egg whites. Truth be told, I don’t even know what you do with egg whites.” Then the lady talks into her ear phone on the side I can’t see, telling somebody that a large hairy man is verbally assaulting her in front of the margarine.

• The democratization of knowledge.

Back before all these Internets and wiki-wiki things, being a reader had one benefit, you knew more stuff than non-readers. Seeing that reading all day gives you that pasty, muscles atrophied, near-sightedness look, poor social skills from so much isolation and the tendency to be startled easily, the reservoir of knowledge you were storing up was pretty much your only redeemable characteristic.

But now anyone can Google anyone (which I’m still not sure is legal if we strictly interpret 19th century morality laws) and get all the knowledge he wants with no mess or paper cuts.

This is especially irksome seeing that I’m in the school teaching biz and knowledge was my main currency. My book smarts were pretty much all I brought to the table. Moreover, wanting to keep up the illusion I knew what I was talking about, occasionally I might make up a “fact” on especially difficult questions, but I figured no one would check, so no harm, no foul. One of my basic lectures on “Hamlet.”

“Yes, I believe Ophelia went so crazy because, not only was her father killed by her boyfriend, but she was pregnant with Hamlet’s child. I base this supposition on a recently discovered missing scene from the First Folio in which Ophelia talks incessantly about craving pickles, wants to put up new curtains in Elsinore and nags at Hamlet to make more money.”

Then the smartphones will start clicking and 15 hands will shoot up to inform me Harold Bloom never mentions pickles nor curtains in his interpretation. Stupid Internet making me look stupid.

• The DVR has skewed my perception of reality.

For TV viewing, I love the Digital Video Recorder. I watch what I want, when I want, can fast-forward through to get to the good parts (I can now watch an entire “Saturday Night Live” in 2.7 minutes), but most importantly, if I’m not paying attention and miss something important, I can rewind.

My brain has been DVRized so I think I can rewind radio, or people, or even the wife. That’s what gets me in trouble.

The wife will be telling me something, but I’ll be distracted thinking about my theory that if dogs could order at a Mexican food restaurant, they would go with the beef enchilada plate (except schnauzers, who I figure would go with that day’s lunch special. They’re pretty cheap), and then the wife will say, “so it’s very important you do that.”

Do what? I had better rewind. Oh no, this is life, not TV! But if I ask, I’ll have to hear the “you never pay attention to me” speech and get a butter sandwich for dinner. Darn you DVR and your siren call to not pay attention!!

• The rise of text-messaging without the accompanying growth of phone key-pads.

Texting can be very helpful, especially when using the cell phone as a kid-tracking device. Always having to pick up the kids from some sort of practice (that’s usually what the wife telling me when I’m not paying attention), they’ll text and ask if I can pick them up at a certain time at a certain place.  Wanting to respond with a simple “yes” on that tiny keypad obviously designed for seven year olds whose fingers have been bound Han dynasty style, my fat fingers will type “x7ikzl0wmoug7&qr%.”  Luckily, my children are now fluent in fatfingerese.

• Newspapers cheapening themselves by throwing their content all loosey-goosey on the Internet. What happens to the integrity of journalistic ethics and editorial control when anyone can post any comments on their stories. Remember who you are, newspaper folk – ink-stained wretches, not Internet nerds sitting in your mother’s basement living on Cap’n Crunch and Mountain Dew. Pure anarchy, I tell you.

I’m just thankful the “Times” hasn’t succumbed to such technological nonsense and gone on-line.