That was a lovely read, thank you Scott. Our elders are to be cherished, that’s for sure. The big questions for me include are we happier and are we healthier as time and technology drives ‘progress’. The answer I fear is no. Life was so much simpler, we were grateful, we enjoyed the magic in everyday things in life. We grew up appreciating fresh food and home cooking without a cookbook or recipe to be found in the kitchen. Living at the coast but not far from the countryside, we knew where our food came from. It was fresh and unprocessed without air miles attached. With the exception of the revolutionary packet Vesta curry my older sister cooked for lunch on Saturday sometimes and packet jelly cubes, I don’t remember processed or heavily packaged food.
With the recent blackout in parts of Europe, we must wonder how our kids will manage without their smart phones and favourite fast foods, but more how will our public services cope with a solar flare that interrupts things or worse an EMP? As a techno skeptic, and someone fearful of our times, I must confess the gravity water filter and the Kitchen in a box Cobb BBQ are at the ready, just in case! But I’m not sure what would replace the prescription meds that now seem to go with simply getting older. Maybe with higher blood pressure, our brains and bodies would be better perfused!
To some extent I would agree with you about technology, but on other paw, we mustn't forget the fact that there is almost certainly a hell of a lot of tech development that is kept hidden from the public. It has been this way for some time, I would also suggest.
Better tech available to everyone, after all, would mean the globalist cabal relinquishing social control.
Cheap, clean energy for example. The fusion torch. Better ultracapacitors for battery recharging (see Tesla).
Somewhere, where the likes of you and me are not permitted, lies some wonderful stuff. Such is the psychology of the monsters who want to rule the world.
Well said all around. In case anybody didn't notice, have a look at the faces of the children watching the film in the photo from the 1950s. They shine with a positivity that you rarely see these days.
The change of the millenium really seems to have been a turning point. I remember in the 20th century eagerly looking forward to each upgrade of the software packages I used, wondering which of the improvements the user-base had been suggesting and discussing would make it in and which would have to wait till next time. The idea that a new version might in any way be inferior to what it replaced never occurred to us. Now every "upgrade" is anticipated with fear, and almost always greeted with loathing because of basic functionality being broken for the sake of some snazzy user-interface change that can be presented to the naive as "progress". Or because it is necessary for some change the company is using to introduce new ways of taking money from users other than producing a good-value, functional product.
In my case the difference might be because last century I was using largely RiscOS products, produced by a comparatively small Cambridge company, Acorn, and a cluster of clever, motivated companies that clustered around it, organisationally if not geographically. Whilst now I have been forced into the MicroSoft world. But even that change is itself symptomatic of the change of the times, with the economy increasingly dominated by rent-seeking monopolies or near-monopolies who put more effort into driving out competition than pleasing the customer.
That was a lovely read, thank you Scott. Our elders are to be cherished, that’s for sure. The big questions for me include are we happier and are we healthier as time and technology drives ‘progress’. The answer I fear is no. Life was so much simpler, we were grateful, we enjoyed the magic in everyday things in life. We grew up appreciating fresh food and home cooking without a cookbook or recipe to be found in the kitchen. Living at the coast but not far from the countryside, we knew where our food came from. It was fresh and unprocessed without air miles attached. With the exception of the revolutionary packet Vesta curry my older sister cooked for lunch on Saturday sometimes and packet jelly cubes, I don’t remember processed or heavily packaged food.
With the recent blackout in parts of Europe, we must wonder how our kids will manage without their smart phones and favourite fast foods, but more how will our public services cope with a solar flare that interrupts things or worse an EMP? As a techno skeptic, and someone fearful of our times, I must confess the gravity water filter and the Kitchen in a box Cobb BBQ are at the ready, just in case! But I’m not sure what would replace the prescription meds that now seem to go with simply getting older. Maybe with higher blood pressure, our brains and bodies would be better perfused!
Very poignant.
To some extent I would agree with you about technology, but on other paw, we mustn't forget the fact that there is almost certainly a hell of a lot of tech development that is kept hidden from the public. It has been this way for some time, I would also suggest.
Better tech available to everyone, after all, would mean the globalist cabal relinquishing social control.
Cheap, clean energy for example. The fusion torch. Better ultracapacitors for battery recharging (see Tesla).
Somewhere, where the likes of you and me are not permitted, lies some wonderful stuff. Such is the psychology of the monsters who want to rule the world.
Used to frequent the cinema in Tamworth as a teenager!!
I even did the first 6 months of the third year of my chef training in the little italian restaurant that used to be under the cinema (Mama Lucias).
Well said all around. In case anybody didn't notice, have a look at the faces of the children watching the film in the photo from the 1950s. They shine with a positivity that you rarely see these days.
The change of the millenium really seems to have been a turning point. I remember in the 20th century eagerly looking forward to each upgrade of the software packages I used, wondering which of the improvements the user-base had been suggesting and discussing would make it in and which would have to wait till next time. The idea that a new version might in any way be inferior to what it replaced never occurred to us. Now every "upgrade" is anticipated with fear, and almost always greeted with loathing because of basic functionality being broken for the sake of some snazzy user-interface change that can be presented to the naive as "progress". Or because it is necessary for some change the company is using to introduce new ways of taking money from users other than producing a good-value, functional product.
In my case the difference might be because last century I was using largely RiscOS products, produced by a comparatively small Cambridge company, Acorn, and a cluster of clever, motivated companies that clustered around it, organisationally if not geographically. Whilst now I have been forced into the MicroSoft world. But even that change is itself symptomatic of the change of the times, with the economy increasingly dominated by rent-seeking monopolies or near-monopolies who put more effort into driving out competition than pleasing the customer.