Monday, August 01, 2005
Good ol' days
An unsolicited offer of a McDonald's senior coffee the other day got me thinking about the olden days. I know there's a lot of selective memory involved in looking back, but I can't help but have some nostalgia for the old days. Of course, there's some things I wouldn't want to give up nowadays, but really not too many. I like the idea of less pain in the dentist and the availability of DVDs and VHS is pretty cool. But what else is really that much better?
Health? Supposedly people live longer, but at what cost? Most folks in their 80s that I know of aren't really all that happy and a lot of them seem to spend more time visiting doctors and hospitals than anything else. Sure you can always read about some 90 year old setting 100 yard "dash" records or climbing some mountain, but those are the exception rather than the rule.
Computers and communications. So what? Cell phones to me are more a pain than anything else. Yeah, their nice in case of an accident or something, but otherwise who cares. How often does it really matter if the info gets there in two days instead of two minutes? Are the programs on the 200+ cable channels really that much better than what used to be on network TV? It's nice getting a DVD overnight from Netflix, but I'd survive without it. I spend most of my time listening to the radio anyway.
Of course now it really doesn't pay to get much fixed. That $40 dollar DVD player will cost you $100 to fix. Remember when a TV repair man would come out your house with his hipbox full of tubes and fix your TV in place? Our fridge lasted as long as I can remember and I'm still using some appliances my parents bought back in the 50s and 60s. Now if something lasts a couple years, it's cause to remark. Computers go out of date before they're even released. You can still play an LP released in the 40s and look at a photo taken 100 years ago. Try playing your CD in a few years or looking at the proprietary digital image in 10!
I'm suppose I'm coming across as some kind of luddite here, but it seems to me a lot of progress isn't necessarily progressing these days. I've got my Pentium powered PC at home sucking down broadband Internet and my Netflix DVDs come in every couple of days and I have a clamshell cell phone on my belt smaller than Kirk's communicator. I'm writing on a blog and drive a computer-laden turbo VW back and forth to my job at a telecom. But take it all away, and give me a hifi playing Fibber McGee and Molly, a dial phone with an operator on it, a lifetime job at some factory assembling Brownie cameras and I'd be just as happy.
