Gunk
2005 05 31
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We're funny people, we humans. We live in a highly technical era, when the tools we use pop into being so fast we barely have time to get used to them.
In a generation we've gone from analog phones to digital cable, from slow computers in the home to ones that could rival the behemoths that used to take up entire rooms. We drive cars that can talk to us, get money from automatic bank tellers that don't, and send our voices over satellite to someplace half a world away faster than you can say "Babbage Engine". I can nuke my food, change channels on my TV from ten feet away, and probably, like most of us, never truly think about or appreciate the cordless lifestyle.
We have medical knowledge people a hundred years ago wouldn't have dreampt of, can travel to the other side of the planet to countries our ancestors didn't even know existed - and all by dinnertime, Our speech is peppered with technical and scientific terms we use as easily as our forefathers talked of milking a cow at sunrise, by hand. We can order just about everything we could imagine and have it delivered to our homes without ever having to interact with another human being.
We have cars, bullet trains, airplanes, computers, PDAs, laptops, clap-on lights, mobile phones, TVs, erector sets, LEGO, pasteurised milk, immunisation, pre-packaged food, home delivery, life-saving surgeries, and a wealth of things we depend on daily that we probably don't even know about, or at least couldn't name if we did.
We're so advanced, so progressive, so able to defy time and all that it brings. Yet, in this highly technical world, with its highly technical speech, the best we can come up with first thing in the morning is, "I've got gunk in my eye."