Tag Archives: luddites

When It Rains It Pours

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I had been stable overall for weeks until a couple days ago.  Just a bunch of things went wrong all at once this week and now I’m having problems with irritability and anger again.  And the fact it’s been too frigid to get out and do much lately isn’t helping.  It started earlier this week when, for whatever reason, my pharmacy decided it wasn’t going to deliver one of my new medications.  This isn’t the first time this has happened.  I told my psych doctor specifically to tell my pharmacy to send this med to my house.  They send all my other meds to me via mail.  But, something must have gotten lost in translation.  I would rather not venture across town to get my meds because I’ve been having bouts when I’m afraid to leave my apartment complex some days, especially in cold and icy weather.  And of course, since I live in a smaller city, public transit is a sick and sad joke in this place.  I wouldn’t even own a stupid car if it wasn’t for garbage like this.  I really wouldn’t.  I mean, the thing just sits in a parking space looking dumb the 99 percent of the time I’m not driving it.  And it still has to have insurance and license plates whether I drive the thing two miles per day or two hundred.  I am so ready for the car sharing services to become available.  But even those will probably get needlessly delayed, just like every other advance that has benefited humanity.  Needless to say, I can’t stand Luddites.  If I didn’t want science and tech, I could move to an Amish village.  Even rural Africa has smart phones now.

Another thing that has chapped my hide raw this week is that my bank has been experiencing difficulties with their internet access banking.  I check my online balance every morning just to see where I stand.  Since the website had been sporadic the last few days I have essentially been flying in the dark all week.  To make matters even better, they often hold my checks for days at a time and cash them whenever they see fit.  The only thing I write a check for any more is my rent.  And I have timed my bank, and there have been months they have held my check for ten days before cashing the thing.  Now if I actually had money, this wouldn’t be a problem.  But, when checks bounce, banks tend to penalize their poorer customers by fining them (let’s call it what it really is) for the sin of not having money.  I sent off my rent check on Monday this week.  As of Friday night, it still hasn’t been cashed.  And this is irritating me.  It burns me that we have instant communication to anywhere on God’s green Earth via internet and cell phones that didn’t exist even thirty years ago, yet in some cases, we are still forced to rely on Industrial era tech that hasn’t changed a bit in over two hundred years.  This is 2019, the 21st century is near a fifth over.  Yet we still have institutions and people who still operate with an 1800 mentality.  It’s like I’m expecting them to renounce electricity and go back to divine right of monarchs before too terribly long.

Another thing I can’t stand is coin operated laundry machines?  Seriously?  In 2019, this nonsense is still a thing?  We had card operated laundry machines when I was in college where you could put folding money on in 1999.  I’m sure the tech has come a long way since then to where you could use even credit cards on washing machines and even vending machines if businesses would just enact them.  With inflation being what it is anymore, the metal in the coins cost more than the stupid coins are designated worth.  If I was suddenly president, the first thing I would do is issue an executive order demanding that all non gold and silver coins be no longer made.  Now gold and silver still have worth, primarily as collectibles, industrial metals, value storage, and they just look cool.  As far as worrying about the card readers at laundromats being hacked, well like ATMs at banks and card readers at gas stations get hacked all the time.  It’s just that we have better cyber security than we did in years past.  I bet for every successful hack, like what happened to Target a year ago, there are thousands that fail.  So, seriously, ditch the needless fear mongering and fantasizing for the past that sucked more than we care to admit, and join the modern era all ready.

As much as I hate stereotyping, maybe Max Planck new more than he realized when he said, “Science progress is made only one funeral at a time.”  Sadly, he could have said the same thing about social progress too it seems to me.  I dread to see what hang ups I have in 2019 the younger generations in 2049 will despise.  At this point I just hope to make it to 50 without having a stroke from the stress and frustration of dealing with one foot in the Star Trek possibilities and the other being stuck in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s.

 

 

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Optimism for The Future

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Change of subject for this post. The summer is all but over.  And it doesn’t bother me much.  Summers have been my toughest times of year since I started having problems with mental health in my late teens.  I just don’t do well in hot and humid weather.  I have no doubt that being overweight only makes this worse.  But I have lost some weight this summer as I’m down a full shirt size.  I have no delusions that I’ll ever be able to run a marathon but I would love to be in better health again.  There is just so much cool and amazing things happening in science, technology, medicine, humanitarian efforts, and even geopolitics that I would love to hang around for quite awhile just to see what happens.

In spite of our problems and divisions there really are some cool things happening even right now.  Just a few days ago I read an article that stated the two Koreas are talking about placing a joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics.  I would have not imagined that to be possible even five years ago.  I saw another article about a Japanese businessman who’s going to literally fly to the moon and back via SpaceX in 2023, also a few days ago.  And I have little doubt that the first people to set first on Mars have already been born, I wouldn’t be surprised if we do go there within 20 years.  As bad as the hurricane has been to the East Coast, at least we can organize relief and rebuilding efforts more rapidly than we could even fifteen years ago.  Pretty much every space agency in existence is making plans to set up bases on the moon.  Cryptocurrencies have filled in the gaps in some nations where the traditional economy is falling apart.  Kind of kicking myself for not buying into bitcoin when it was only a couple hundred dollars a shot.  Another statistic I read a few days ago that gives me hope is that people that can read are reading three times as much as their predacessors in the early 1980s did.  Granted most of this reading is online articles, tweets, and conversations with friends and colleagues.

Advances are coming in fast and often.  And as connected we as a species and civilization are, they aren’t going to slow down anytime soon.  Get used to it.  Adapt or get left behind.  I may find it frustrating to listen to people talk about the ‘good ol’ days’ but I am also amused when I hear griping about the present and talking how there’s no hope for the future on forums that didn’t even exist twenty years ago.  I might take these types seriously if they were moving into Luddite communes or Amish villages.  I for one say ‘screw the good ol’ days, they weren’t all that great’, especially if you were a racial, religious, or sexual minority, woman, or a child.  And I hope we keep advancing so should I find myself in the 2050s as an old man pining for the 2010s, the youngsters will tell me where go with my nostalgia.  And I hope some of these youngsters can tell me off from a lunar or Martian colony or via computer based telepathy or in full emersion vertical reality.

I am convinced some really cool things are going to happen within our lifetimes, especially if we don’t anything really stupid as a civilization that we can’t easily undo.  As much attention as we pay to national politics, it isn’t the politician who’s going to make a cool reality possible.  The best they can do is pass favorable laws and step aside.  Science the %*&@ out of our problems, to quote ‘The Martian.’ Otherwise other peoples in other nations will bypass these nations and make advances possible.  America and Western Europe are no longer the only shows on Earth, and no amount of whining, politicking, and trade wars are going to change this.  And why not let everyone have a shot at some prosperity?  The sooner we as a species realize that we share the same planet, breathe the same air, drink the same water, and that a species at war with itself is doomed, the better.  At this point, we can achieve some cool stuff as long as we don’t seriously screw up.  We don’t seriously mess up, it won’t be a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’  And I feel extremely privileged to be alive to witness these transitions even if the ride gets bumpy and irritating at times.