Living in today's society, especially as a person who grew up during the fastest technological evolution of human history, everything is now on-demand. On-demand food, entertainment, water, information, all of it. We've come to expect instant responses from every corner of our lives. How far we've come.
When I was born, it was the age of the h-track and record player. TV was offered in black and white and in color, depending on the tv you bought. Cars were gas-guzzling and boat-sized and fast-food was only at McDonald's. Telephones were attached to a wall and the receiver to a cord. We were also in the middle of the Cold War so the Russians (Soviets at the time) were bad and Germany was split in two by a huge wall. Nuclear war was an actual possibility.
By the time I was my daughter's age now (8) I was watching the Cold War come to an end on tv with the Berlin Wall being torn down and fast food was springing up everywhere. Telephones didn't use a rotary dial up any more, they had push buttons. The first cell phones hit the market, but were so big no one would use them today. H-track was long gone but records and now cassette tapes were how one listened to music. Color tvs were the norm and a new device, called a VCR was a bit hit, allowing people to watch movies on-demand, in the comfort of their homes for the first time. We even owned a huge microwave that replaced the old popcorn maker I had mastered growing up. We thought about the future and how people would eventually be able to make a phone call and actually see the person on the other end!
In the next ten years things would change even more. Devices became smaller, more energy efficient. Rechargeable batteries were a wonder. Cell phones got smaller and smaller, and computers hit the scene, but initially looked more like today's servers than the desktops we have now. They were slow, did hardly anything and the internet was in its infancy. But consumers demanded better and more of these products so tape cassettes gave way to CDs and CD players, TVs became flatter but bigger and with a better picture, Microwaves became a mainstay in people's kitchens and fast food became plentiful. After a couple of years, clunky computers eventually gave way to laptops, and internet speed went from painfully slow dial-up to wireless, thus connecting the human species in a way we had never before been connected. Some people thought it was a fad (ha!). Suddenly I could talk to strangers in Australia, the southern USA and even Europe in a second. Within a couple of more years I could talk to someone half a world away face to face. The world went from feeling very large to very small in a matter of 20 years.
So is it any wonder kids today have no patience? We, as a society, have shown them to demand the faster, more efficient new thing. Kids no longer need to look up in an encyclopedia the information for a school paper, they can find it with the touch of a button on Google. Kids will never know the richness of a record player's effect on music or remember each other's phone numbers. My daughter can watch whatever she wants, whenever she wants, even movies that are still in the theater. Traditional recipes for biscuits are being lost because we no longer bother to make them from scratch. Eventually, I predict, everything will be voice-automated so kids won't even need to learn how to write on paper. Is this a good thing? Yes and no. Its the aim of every parent to make their children's lives easier than their own. But have we gone too far? Are things too easy? I see value in struggle. I see value in having people learn from trial and error how things work and won't work. But in today's society of instant access, do kids really have opportunity to struggle? Are we quashing a generation or two of their creativity because they have had everything handed to them in pre-packaged freshness?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I believe our society is the modern version of Rome. We have strived to and become the modern pinnacle of human achievement. In North America we live in (comparatively) the lap of luxury, with time to debate the philosophies of life and universe and the latest celebrity drama. But we all know what happened to Rome, if you don't, just Google it.
