I have to say, I am very disappointed with the rest of you humans.
Here we are, halfway through the first year of a new millennium, and if television has taught me nothing else in the last 20 years, we are terribly behind in our technology.
In the early 1950s, TV promised us luxury resorts on the moon by the ’70s. Instead we got the Bee Gees, which to me is a kick in the teeth of a consolation prize.
In the 1990s, we were looking forward to computers you wear on your face and advancements in genetics that allow us to cure any disease, enhance our natural abilities far beyond anything ever contemplated before, and overall just making life a whole lot niftier. However, all we’ve really accomplished has been to create a veritable Xerox copy of sheep, and a slew of patent arguments.
Most of our more mundane appliances are getting so high-tech they’ve become more amusement than utility. For the right amount of money, one can purchase a lawn mower that operates in the same way as a radio-controlled car. And for the true technophile, Sony sells electronic dogs to the public for the low, low price of $2,500.
I remember a time when cell phones were big, clunky things that only high-powered business executives, doctors and drug dealers carried. Now, every high-schooler carries one in their security-conscious translucent backpack. Computers used to be huge beastly machines that took up entire rooms for the sole purpose of crunching numbers. A far cry from today’s desktop wonders, each one being far more powerful than their mammoth ancestors, capable of simulating atomic collisions and nuclear fission calculations.
To me, science-fiction authors have the most to worry about. After all, they make their living writing about things we have yet to invent. When we actually invent our universal-language translating implants and space-travel vehicles, what will they write about? If science actually keeps up with media, we may be faced with a drought of bestsellers and fiction in the future.
It’s a small sacrifice to make, I think, if it means we get jetpacks and Jetsonian houses on stands above the stratosphere that much sooner.
After all, new technology is nothing to be afraid of.
Newsweek recently ran a column written by Richard Todd, a lawyer in Oregon who is upset he couldn’t figure out how to order tickets to the Olympics on the Internet. Todd laments he has trouble operating his stove because it, too, must be programmed.
He makes the point that if e-mail had been invented before the telephone, if it was a new device to us today, then it would be the big revolution and regular electronic communication would be in the trash with the punch card computer. Maybe that’s true. After all, imagine instant vocal communication with anybody on the planet at any time. No waiting for someone to read your message, reply and have it come back. The possibilities are absolutely astounding.
But of course I’m being facetious. Everybody knows you can send voice attachments over e-mail.
Chris Boyer, State News staff member, is rapidly becoming a crotchety old man. Send him voice attachments at boyerchr@msu.edu.
