A mixed blessing?

Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

          ~Carrie P. Snow

As I have indicated in a previous blog, my computer died about a week ago. Panicked, I yelled for Lanny. He tried his best, but all he could get it to do was display a weird plaid screen with an error message. He went straight to his computer to look up the symptoms and came back with the bad news... we'd have to take the machine somewhere to see if they could retrieve the information off it, but most likely it was dead.

Fortunately, the machine was not quite five years old and Apple would work on it, replacing anything that needed to be replaced, for a "minimal" fee. Compared to buying a new one, this was a good deal. We had also located a guy who fixed Apples and he was able to retrieve the data off the old hard drive and would reinstall it once the machine was fixed. So, off to the local Apple store we went.

There is only one Apple store in our area, and it is quite a drive. It is located in the "high rent" area of town, at a mall known as The Fashion Mall. This is where all the higher end retailers are-- Sax Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, and Tiffany's come to mind. I certainly don't mind shopping there, though rarely do I buy anything. I have found outlet shopping online (especially when deals come with free shipping...) is a much easier way to get any clothing items I need. And since retirement, I haven't needed much. So it had been a long time since I'd walked the corridors of The Fashion Mall. I was looking forward to it!

We arrived on a Tuesday morning, close to lunch time. We found a parking space very close to the entrance-- that was unusual. We walked into the mall and I couldn't believe my eyes... there were so few people inside that we could hear our voices echo off the marble floors and walls. The place was empty. Creepy empty... 

The Fashion Mall mid day... empty!! 

Lanny knew where the Apple Store was, so he led me around the corner and down the main mall corridor. When we arrived, we walked into... chaos.

...except in the Apple Store!

I couldn't believe what I saw. There were several people seated along one wall attending a class on how to use their new computer. There were customers everywhere playing with all the gadgets. There were dozens of young, trendy people wearing blue shirts who were there to greet and help all who came through the doors. And way in the back was something called The Genius Bar. 

The Genius Bar in the back of the store... where nerds rule!

I am not kidding... The Genius Bar was where we had to pick up the newly fixed computer. Manned by three or four computer nerds, the line to be waited on there was three deep in front of each of them. Fortunately, the nice young woman in orange dreadlocks and huge horn-rimmed glasses who greeted us at the front of the store had entered us in her hand-held device that notified some other nerd "in the back" to retrieve our computer. We only had to wait a minute or two for him to come out with our machine. I signed some papers, gave him my credit card and we were off with a working machine. 

Back out into the empty mall... We did stop at the Williams Sonoma store to window shop kitchen gadgets (the most heavenly smell was coming from there as someone was making chocolate chip waffles...). We didn't buy anything. 

It struck me that the world is changing in ways that could never have been foreseen. The Mall, a way of life that started back when I was a kid, won't last forever. Apparently I am not the only one who shops online often enough that the traffic at the mall is drastically reduced. Even our consumerism has become lazy... we can buy our stuff online rather than go shopping. I am not sure whether to be troubled by this or not. It certainly becomes an issue for the little local "mom and pop" shops... but then I remember that my own little local yarn shop, run by a couple in their twenties, has an online business that is thriving. My best friend in Florida is as good a customer there as I am... So perhaps it is, as in all things, both good and bad. Or as my best friend says, "it is what it is..." But I find it most ironic that the one store that required physical presence in order to use it was the one that represented the technology that may be a cause for the rest of the mall being empty!!