New

Technology has re-ignited the American romance with The New. People wind around city blocks for the latest opportunity to throw money at Apple. The computing world quakes at the release of the newest Windows operating system. All that quaking is quite wise. A new Windows operating system throws a new wrench into the world of computing usually.

Is the quality of life actually improved with all these new gadgets? I have a general opinion about this. I can testify that my own recent experience with new technology has diminished my own happiness considerably.

Convenience is not happiness. It may contribute to the process of being truly happy, but it does not generate happiness. The selling point of most new technology is convenience. This convenience can be a detriment to personal development.

Sometimes doing things the old hard way yields new insights and a better product. I remember when everyone went out and bought automatic bread machines. This had a devastating effect of neighborhood bakeries. I sat at many tables where a machine-produced loaf was presented with great pride. Most tasted like dried paste. Others had the rubbery consistency of the worst store-bought bread. I smiled and remained the good guest, but I did not buy a bread machine. I still make bread the old-fashioned way every week. Each loaf is different in some way. Each loaf represents patience, timing and creativity. My timing and y creativity, not a machine's.

I am a child of the 1950's and 1960's. The American romance with the new was booming then. We live with the results today. A country-wide network of buses, trains and urban trolley lines was decimated by the automobile industry in cahoots with government officials. Whole neighborhoods of historic and serviceable buildings were leveled to build useless concrete plazas and ugly concrete high-rise boxes, which are now crumbling and not worth retrofitting. The new romance with the Space Race sucked public money away from conservation, poverty-alleviation and infrastructural development right here on our planet. The Arms Race to develop new nuclear weapons and subsequent nuclear power sucked money from the same areas of human need.

Now we have an ongoing Technology Race. Obsession with Android vs Apple occupies some of our brightest minds. Meanwhile the human population swells, the poverty-gap grows, the atmosphere and climate reel out of balance. I imagine a hand sticking out of human-induced flood waters to protect a smart phone from short-circuiting.