From Dawn Till Dusk

Things in motion sooner catch the eye that what not stirs.

This from Shakespeare, a warning that has stood the test of time. From Troilus and Cressida, the expression was used to mock our preferences for the latest fad, something which hasn't changed. The entirety of twentieth century innovation, beginning with the industrial revolution, has turned us from bedpans to Intel chips in less than one hundred years and will inevitably make the world as foreign on our deathbeds as it was at our birthing.

I remember talking to my grandfather, once, about what it was like to not have an indoor toilet, when my mother chirped up and told me that she didn't have one until she was married. This is akin to explaining to a fifteen year old that my high school computer class consisted of learning how to properly punch the cards and receiving a blank stare in return. Consider this, however. One of the great cornerstones of psychology, attributed to Freud, was a death fixation. The fear of death was once the hallmark of the modern man. It drove, unconsciously, our desires and provoked some astounding defeats in the minds of many, but I would like to introduce the fear of the future as a more relevant theme to describe symptoms visible everywhere in society today. Isn't it apparent to you that if you don't keep up on the fads that you will simply become irrelevant and probably by next week? Assuming I live another forty years, its likely I won't be able to recognize the world I grew up in unless I spend all my time at the forefront of the developments in science and technology, biophysics and genetics. Sadly its an uphill battle that's already casting victims to the wayside. Look around you and it won't take long to identify someone to whom the world is already a strange and foreign place.

Take solace, however, in the notion that while we have spent a ridiculous amount of time, money and effort in some areas, to our advancement, there are some things that have been overlooked and ignored. While I can cart around a stunningly small computer, instantly connected to the entire world without flares, a telegraph machine or hundreds of miles of cables I still can't find a car that will take me there that doesn't use the combustion engine or fossil fuels. I can point a card at a machine, buying and selling, identify myself without opening my mouth and hand pick the familial qualities I would like to see in future generations but I can't find a light bulb that will last longer than a couple of months. There are rockets, satellites, telescopes pointed at everything in the known galaxy and yet the woman who lives across the street from me can't survive unless she cuts every coupon she can find and still has a decent meal only once a month. How many ring tones do I need for my cell phone when across the city thousands of people a year slip into the anonymity of obsolescence, many of them in my own family.

There is a nineteenth century expression which describes someone who has faded into the background and while we will certainly live longer than our forefathers did, the most of us will have to adjust to life "on the shady side of forty." Suffice it to say that I no longer include my computer programming course on my resume as when I am asked to demonstrate my ability I can no longer find the slot to put the card into and all that howling laughter is just too distracting for accurate punching.