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Perspectives!
I've a birthday due before long. As you might suspect, there's good news
and bad news. One piece of good news? I know for an absolute certainty that
I won't, unlike seven of my uncles, die before age 60.
In my lifetime I've seen many good inventions, and some bad. One of the
best was the almost miraculous device with which I keyboard this column of
personal opinion: the Macintosh computer. My thanks to Pacifican Jef
Raskin, in whose fertile imagination the Mac first began to take shape. The
Mac provides strengths where I'm weakest. I'd have been a terrible
secretary. My fingers don't always hit the right keys at the right time. I
also constantly second guess myself. I need to change words, move them to
and fro. I edit myself interminably. Thanks, Jef.
I came to the conclusion long ago there's always a balance. Life is a zero
sum game. Computers: a plus. Speed bumps: minus. That adds up to zero.
Speed bumps were invented in my lifetime, and without getting my ok. Their
inventor should be made to drive at high speed for hours on end over mile
after mile of his creation. I presume the inventor was a man. I think a
woman would have better sense.
Another rotten invention? Soundwalls! Those monstrous miles of boring brick
should be torn down, or at least graced at intervals with statuary, windows
or even billboards. To be that boring should be against the law.
I can phone Crescent City and pay five cents a minute. It used to cost 27
cents a minute to call Walnut Creek. That's a plus. The balancing minus? Phone companies competing ferociously for my business, but charging me for Directory Assistance,
people telemarketing me at inopportune times from Nova Scotia or India, and
phone companies sending me gift checks to suck me back into their system. I
pay far more for phone service than ever before. Twenty five years ago,
when AT&T was still a bad old monopoly, my phone bill was a fraction its
present size, and that's allowing for inflation. As for SBC, formerly
Pacific Bell, that acronym says it all.
When, in the winter of 1956, I had good reason to argue about a particular
phone bill, the phone company representative was the soul of courtesy,
though she never gave an inch. When she later discovered I might be in the
right, she called back to concede my argument. Even had she not, I'd been
extremely impressed with her diplomacy and tact in a difficult situation.
When it comes to phone service, I prefer 1950's style, thanks. Deregulation
is the pits. Same for airline deregulation. Gas and electric utilities?
Ditto.
Today's 30 year olds take medical advances for granted. They're not much
impressed with penicillin, polio vaccine, or the various preventives like
annual flu shots. No one's died or been horribly disfigured by Smallpox in
several decades. Polio may be gone entirely from the world by February 23,
2005, the centennial of Rotary International, which has contributed tens of
millions of dollars and tens of thousands of volunteer hours with that
extravagant goal in mind. Without polio vaccine, Terra Nova High today
might have 30 or 40 students in wheelchairs or Iron Lungs. The student body
would be mourning the deaths of several more. Every school nationwide would
be grieving, as we did so often in the forties and fifties. Thank you, Dr.
Salk. Thank you, Dr. Sabin.
Today's high school kids will probably live longer. Many Terra Nova grads
of 2003 may last into their nineties. Several may survive more than a
century. My wish for them: may you live long, but may the quality of your
lives match the quantity of your years.
The Reactor's e mail address: Paul@thereactor.net.
Check his website at www.thereactor.net.
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