What’s the Word: Times, they are a-changin’… fast
Times change. I’m sure no one out there would disagree with that, but it seems these days they change more quickly than they ever have before. Technologies that would have seemed like something out of a science fiction story when I was a child are part of our everyday lives now.
Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution technological change has become almost exponential, with the advances of one decade enabling even more rapid changes in the next.
Take the ubiquitous cell-phone. In the past few decades we’ve seen them evolve from the bulky and notoriously unreliable “bag-phones” to the sleek and miniaturized wireless communication devices an ever growing segment of the population has come to feel they can’t do without.
Even so, I have to admit it’s still somewhat jarring for me to see a gray-haired farmer in a work shirt and bib-overalls pull a shiny flip-phone out of his pocket to answer a call. I’m not sure why that is. I’m sure his cell-phone is just as important to him in his job as mine is to me.
I guess it’s just the juxtaposition of high-technology and the traditional garb of agronomy that elicits a surprise response in me, though a look at some of the high-tech tractors and farm equipment these days should quickly shoot down that preconception.
Seems we all have to have our little phones.
And, like many of us, I can’t deny that I’m a willing victim of the cell-phone’s “siren call.” Perhaps too much so. Case in point. I was almost halfway to work recently when I realized I had left my own phone at home. I promptly turned around almost without thinking and headed back to retrieve it.
To my credit, no sooner had I turned around than I thought, “Man, this is ridiculous. I can live without that stupid phone for one day.”
Unfortunately, and to my eternal shame, my 21st century mind just as quickly rejected that concept and shortly afterward my phone was snuggled safely in my camera bag and I was on my way back to work.
Yep, that’s right. I had to have it. The ability to communicate instantly was far too important for me to do without it, even for one day.
Analyzing that response in myself brought home an even more momentous concept, the importance of communication to all of us.
Certainly, communication has always been important. Our lives, our livelihoods, and even our happiness, to some extent, have always depended on being able to convey timely information to our associates and sentiment to our friends and loved ones.
The sheer importance of communication to a society, no matter what the size or makeup of that society, has never really changed. The basic need for communication has generated one technological advance after another. The development of the written word, the printing press, radio, the telegraph, the telephone, television, and now computers and the Internet, have all been driven by the need to communicate.
Obviously, what has changed drastically is the speed and convenience of communication. But that convenience hasn’t come without its own set of problems and trade-offs.
Anyone sitting in theater, a restaurant, or a meeting who has been subjected to the irksome jangle of a cell-phone ringer will attest to one of the more irritating aspects of their proliferation.
I suppose the good thing is, thanks to technology, now they are small enough to fit where we’d like those people to put them.