Or, I can remember when ignorance was bliss.
Yesterday I was perusing the aisles of my local Home Depot, looking for some sundry items for my job. I passed a section of the store containing power generators, pamphlets and a video describing the newest, latest and greatest home generator system. The voice on the video was talking about how comfortable you would be while your neighbors would be wallowing in their own filth, surrounded by heaps of rotting meat and food from a powerless refrigerator or freezer, sweating, freezing, out of contact with civilization because they had no computer access. No computer access? I scoffed loudly at the idea, but stopped in the aisle and contemplated that thought. It's a fairly sobering thought I must say.
Technology is such a double edged sword. In my lifetime the advances have come swiftly and cut so deeply into the fabric of society that I'm afraid it may have come too fast. One one hand you have the medical advances, organ transplants, artificial organs, limbs. Curing cancers, at least some of them, holding AIDS at bay, wiping diseases of the face of the earth. Scientific advances, landing on the moon, sending vehicles into deep space, taking pictures of objects so far away, making machines so small as to require the most powerful microscopes to be seen. Harnessing the power of splitting atoms or fusing atoms.
Then you have the stuff that pertains to everyday life. Air conditioning, cable television, cell phones, satellite television, GPS, personal computers, the internet, anti lock disc brakes, air bags. Designer prescription drugs, touted as the be all end all with more side effects than the original diagnosis. Comfort food for the masses. Frosting for the daily cake that is our lives. Tools that stopped being tools and became toys for the unimaginative, the weak, the lazy. Air conditioning, though it feels great, just sucks the will and energy out of a person. Cable and satellite television along with gaming consoles brought us even more sucrose to rot our brains and destroy young imaginations.
As I sit here in my air conditioned house, enjoying my satellite television and wireless DSL, listening to my Ipod on my surround sound system, cellphone resting on my end table, I can only wonder when it stopped being about keeping up with the Joneses and became all about the Benjamins. This holiday season, when the enormous TV's go flying off the shelves and the outrageously priced gaming systems find their way under trees all across this great nation, I wonder if anyone will remember the Christmasses of their youth and the simple pleasures and simple toys they received. Probably not.