Time to slow down a little and look at what we've already got

When I was younger, I used to enjoy just about every technological advance I could put my hands on.

Bigger TV sets with sharper pictures, CD players for the home, for cars and for walking around, even my first cell phone, the one that was the size of a brick and gave me 20 minutes of calls for $35.99 a month from LA Cellular.

When my wife called me from her bank in France in 1995 and said she had forgotten some papers she needed, being able to use our home fax machine and send the documents from Los Angeles to Toulouse in less than five minutes left me agog. I was convinced that the fax machine was the greatest invention of all.

And when I got a laptop with a cellphone attachment that meant I could access the Internet anywhere I could get a cellphone signal, I thought we had reached the pinnacle of achievement.

Inherit the Wind

I should have known better. I should have remembered Spencer Tracy's wonderful speech as Henry Drummond in "Inherit the Wind."

"Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, 'All right, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.'"

When I was little, making a long-distance phone call was a very big deal. It was an era before direct dial and area codes; in fact, I've mentioned before that my family's first phone number I can remember -- in 1957 -- had six digits.


I pretty much always remember us having a television, although I'm pretty sure I was 15 or 16 before we got a color set. What I remember most from those days was that TV stations weren't broadcasting 24 hours a day. As late as 1978, when my first wife and I got HBO for the first time, it was only on six or eight hours a day.

Early computers

Things change, and they seem to be changing more quickly all the time. We never got the flying cars that were predicted, but I don't remember any futurists of the mid 20th century suggesting that people would have person computers.

I mean, how could you? Nobody had rooms in their houses big enough for computers.

But if you look at the picture, for all the space it took, that computer was less powerful than the iPhone or Android you carry around with you.

But the new technology doesn't come without problems, and some of the problems are so scary that on one even wants to talk about them.

In just the last 40 years, we have become so dependent on computers and other electronics that a serious Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack could be so catastrophic that it could throw us a thousand years into the past.

You think I'm exaggerating?

I wish I were. We are so dependent on technology for everything important in our lives and a breakdown in the system might be worse than a nuclear war or a pandemic. Think about this: If you live in a metropolitan area of any size, you are completely dependent on deliveries -- mostly by trucks -- of food, medicine and other necessities of life every day of the year.

EMP would kill the trucks, and even if there were old ones without electronics, they couldn't get through because of all the cars that would be blocking the roads.

We wouldn't be able to refrigerate anything, and anything electric in our homes would be out of commission for the duration.

Something frightening most people wouldn't even consider:

Nearly half of all American adults regulate their moods with anti-depressants. And a smaller number but still a significant number take anti-psychotics.

There's really very little question that we have gone so far beyond what we could afford to lose when it comes to technology. And thinking nothing will ever happen is whistling past a very large graveyard. Just about the only sensible thing we can do at this point is start demanding that instead of continuing to push ahead with toys we don't need, we should start hardening the things we do need to protect them from EMP and other potential problems.

Even if we had to step back -- figuratively -- to 1960 or 1970, it's better than thinking nothing bad will ever happen to us because we're so smart.

Personally, I'd go back even further, but that's a topic for another day.