by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1997 by Michael Finley

Baloney. If you're a computer user, the legs can come or go as they please. They're like elbows on a whale: you don't use 'em; you don't need 'em. It's the eyes that betray you big time. I'm talking about the heartbreak of presbyopia.

Presbyopia is middle-age nearsightedness. As human beings reach middle age, the lenses of our eyes lose their ability to change shape. Suddenly, horribly, we are unable to focus on nearby objects.

Presbyopia was no problem in the olden days. A hundred thousand years ago, the life span of a human averaged about 35. Hunters by trade, we died young and eagle-eyed.

But today's high tech gatherers, gleaning data at the computer console, living to ripe old ages, are at an anatomical disadvantage. We stay up after dark, poring over our screens, reading when our eyes should be resting up. Anthropologists may one day refer to us as Red Eye Man.

The worst thing to me is that presbyopia isn't classified as a disease. Since it happens to everybody, it is considered "normal." Scientists, many of whom wear glasses, are strangely calm about the epidemic. I call it disturbing.

Presbyopia (for more science, check out the ForSight website at http://www.cvworld.com/forsight/eyecond/C03.04.02.html) strikes us down cruelly in our prime. Just when you reach a point in your life when you're making a bit of money, and begun to accumulate cachet, along comes nature to make you wear foolish-looking spectacles.

Have you seen the reading glasses display at the drug store? Ray-Bans they ain't.

It occurs to me that if technology had developed differently, and we computed in front of huge drive-in movie screens, presbyopia would not be the issue it is.

But instead we chose to use keyboards and monitors that we place within 24 inches of our foreheads -- precisely the wrong place to be for most people in their 40s and up.

When presbyopia first appears it is only a mild discontinuity. You know it is getting worse when you find yourself Windexing your monitor screen several times a day. It is in full stride when you start Windexing yourself.

The degradation is rapid. One day you can thread a needle one-handed. The next thing you know you are saying excuse me to parking meters.

Sure, you make adaptations. You set larger font defaults for programs like Word and Netscape. You sit closer to the screen, soaking up those gamma rays. Late in life, you learn to return things to their proper place, because if they aren't there, baby, they're gone.

My desk used to be covered with paper and coffee cups -- disgraceful, really. Now it is immaculate, except for fourteen pairs of $9 reading glasses, which I am constantly juggling for different tasks. I use bifocals for writing, full-frame readers for the newspaper, an extra-powerful pair for turning my son's orthodontic appliance at bedtime. I even have a magnifying glass for the phone book.

I have a pair I bought at Walgreen's, with stainless steel frames, that weighs almost a half pound. When you put them on your chin collapses against your throat. I think they were designed for optic weightlifters.

And I have a pair of red horn-rims on a string -- when you don't need 'em they hang around your neck. I caught myself once in the bathroom mirror with those on and thought it was Aunt Edna.

Of course, presbyopia is just nearsightedness. So if you misplace your glasses, you can always read the newspaper. Simply lay it out on the floor and then stand on a chair. Sometimes the best thing that can happen is dropping your glasses. Now that they're far away from you, you can find them. But back up carefully. Where there is one pair there are inevitably more.

But adapting only goes so far. I think I speak as a typical member of my generation when I say that other generations might put up with this nonsense, but not us. Heck, we're the people who forced the Pentium chip to learn long division. We fixed Social Security. We got Microsoft to let us keep our firstborn for a few more years.

I'm thinking class action suit here. We've got the votes and the tax base and we can roll out the big legal guns to create a workaround from this whole presbyopia thing.

And hey, you kids, that like to point at us and laugh at our tortoise shells. If we don't find a solution, you too will wind up like us some day, and we are going to point and laugh right back at you. If that is really you we are pointing at.

TRANSCOMPETITION

A Business Week Book

Transcompetition: Moving Beyond Competition and Collaboration
by Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley
List: $24.95
Our Price: $17.47
You Save: $7.48 (30%)

Hardcover, 240 pages
Published by McGraw-Hill
Publication date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0070530823

Michael Finley is co-author with Harvey Robbins of THE NEW WHY TEAMS DON'T WORK.Visit Michael Finley at his home page, or e-mail him at mfinley@mfinley.com