Date: July 28, 2010
Location: Plattekill, NY
It is an interesting position to be old in today’s technological society. It is not because you can watch young people make the same mistakes that you made. It s not because you know that no mater how traumatic the day may seem to be right now, the world will continue to spin, the sun will still rise again, and somehow you will still love, laugh and grow from each experience. Enjoying the perspective of a life full of experience is not the reason being old today is interesting. It is interesting because you can remember what it is you thought today was going to be like. And how different, and yet alike, those visions are when they are compared with the reality that makes an old man ponder.
As a child we read about Dick Tracy and his magic watch knowing that it was pure fiction. Today we all walk the street with Android powered cell phones, Smartphones and Ipads. Items that Dick Tracy would never have believed could exist. We think nothing of taking a picture, with an electronic eye, sending it half way across the country and then texting the recipient some cute description of the lady on her back in a mud puddle with her feet pointing to the heavens. Of course your wife or your date that happens to be the wet bottomed subject of your photo finds little humor in the event.
There are many things we dreamed as youths of times long gone by that did not happen. We sill do not have peace in the world, we still have not cured the major illnesses of our medical world, and we still have vestiges of the worst of society spouting political diatribes that does little but fan the flames of hatred and bigotry in the small minds of some people in society. Some things have not advanced nearly as rapidly as we might have wished.
Yet as I an, old man, sit here and contemplate my perspective I am putting my thoughts on a virtual sheet of paper that will soon be available to the whole world. I will, while sitting in a parking lot, be able to speak to the full breadth of humanity that exists on the planet by the simple pushing of a few buttons and the minor effort of spending a very few moments to accomplish this magical feat. I realize the whole world is not reading this drivel. I realize that I am postulating to very few eyes, but the opportunity to reach the vision of almost any pair of eyes in almost any corner of the world is there and just that easy. This is a reality that did not even exist in the imagination of futuristic thinking minds during the adolescence of my life.
There are many areas of technology that have advanced as far as, or even further, than communications. I won’t bore you with my shunted descriptions. It is just a fact that we have evolved eons during my life time in many areas of technology. My wife, who was, a few years ago, afraid of an Apple 2C computer, now carries a phone with more computing capacity than that green screened large box of solid circuits could ever have dreamt of having. Connie now, regularly, texts her daughter, her granddaughter, her grandson, and even her husband. It was but a few years ago she did not know that text was a verb. We all have made great strides in our technological evolution
I am trying to fight the desire to compare the success of our technological evolution with the seemingly failure of our human or humanities evolution. I am sure I do not have to point the dissimilar paths of advancement to anyone. I am very sure that anyone with the intelligence to simply read can understand the sadness that fills my heart when I reflect on the ability of our human mind to find solutions such as fitting more and more computing power into a smaller and smaller places and yet can not find room in our large hearts for the love of someone or something that is just a little different that we are. Be it a difference of color, sex, or political persuasion.
From an old man’s perspective and a wanna-bees techno geek’s attitude I realize we have advanced, on some levels, way beyond our dreams. From a perspective of a person that has lived during that rocket ride of advancement, I also realize that we may not have advanced nearly as far as we think nor nearly as far as we should have given the imagination and techno-talent we have exhibited.
Or maybe I am just an old man with too much time on my hands and too many thoughts running through my addled head. I must go live my life again. This was just a thought.
Date: July 29, 2010
Location: Plattekill, NY
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To those of my blog world you have a day off today. After I read my efforts yesterday I felt they needed a little bit of editing and that is what I did this morning. I hope I was successful.
So take a few moments in your life off and skip one day of my diatribe. I have a life to live also and I fear it does not included enough time to bore you today.
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