Originally published December 3 2005
Social critic finds fault with conveniences of modern technology
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Reporter Tony Long discusses the negative impacts of technology and instant gratification on our daily lives.
You take quill to parchment (OK, you have paper, but it's pitted with wood pulp) and write him a letter.
The LudditeThe Pony Express doesn't yet exist (the first rider won't set off from St. Joseph, Missouri, until April 1860), and telegraph won't be functional until late 1861, so your letter will go the usual way: by sailing ship around the Horn.
Today, sitting at home in Greenwich, you can dispatch an e-mail to your bartender brother out west that he'll be able to read within minutes of mixing the day's last cosmopolitan.
On balance, any of those are probably a better alternative to the clipper ship.
My expectations have been raised to this ridiculous level by technology running amok through my heretofore-bucolic existence.
I used to be a laid-back guy.
I get irritable when my gratification isn't instantaneous.
The whole world is bitchier these days.
I'm old enough to remember when waiting a few days for a letter to arrive was standard operating procedure, even in the bare-knuckles business world.
I recall a time without answering machines, when you just had to keep calling back on your rotary phone until someone picked up.
(Which had the unintended benefit of allowing you to reconsider whether the original call was even worth making in the first place.)
The world moved at a more leisurely pace and, humanistically speaking, we were all the better for it.
Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it.
The body may be able to withstand the strain -- for a while -- but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil wheel.
The boys in corporate don't want you to hear this because the more they can suck out of you, the lower their costs and the higher their profit margin.
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