Control. It's the Alternate to Delete.

Technology occasionally messes with my brain.

Back in my first years of college, all of my papers were produced on a typewriter. I hand-wrote pages of ideas, cleaned them up in a second draft, and then carefully tapped them out on the keys. Ding, return, oh shit. New sheet of paper.

Now that I can compose on screen, and backspace and CTRL-Z to my heart’s desire, I’ve become more daring. And more sloppy. In life, even more so.

In the digital world, we exist in a universe that thrives on a lack of permanence. We may edit, edit, and edit again. Even if we click Save. It is this luxury that makes us (me) inattentive sometimes. On occasion, my mind expects an undo function to be available for any time—at just the toggling of my fingers. One that will reverse the moment of impulse in which I said or did too much. One that will spring back into my hands the fragile heirloom that has shattered on the floor. One that will erase the root beer float and fried chicken I ate for dinner. Like none of it never happened.

To further extend my demands on the miracles of modern times, my mind sometimes imagines feats similar to others that currenly exist: like clicking a button and instantly knowing the name and artist of a song that’s playing. Or uploading an image to search the web for its source.

Tonight we met an old friend at the bar. I hugged him and he smelled wonderful. And my mind sprung to query mode: don’t I have an app that will tell me what this fragrance is, so I don’t have to sheepishly ask?

Not yet. Soon come, I’m guessing. That and a little time travel for all of life’s little Deletes.