By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1993, The Syracuse Newspapers
Growing old is hard. I can see that
clearly now, looking at the century from the halfway mark.
My perspective changed on April 23.
That was the day Bill and I were both born—not in the same
year, but on the same day.
Bill is that guy Shakespeare. He'd
be pretty old by now, but he's long since gone. I plan to be around
a while, maybe for another 50 years.
When Bill was born 329 years ago,
the world he came into had no planes or trains or TVs or computers,
no modern technology at all.
If you wanted to go somewhere, you
rode a horse or boarded a ship or climbed into a coach. Or maybe
you walked, and when you did, you stepped carefully around the
horse droppings.
If you wanted a little entertainment,
you went to the local bawdy house and watched a play. Tossing
tomatoes and rotten apples was part of the fun, any time you didn't
like the action.
If you hankered for some music at
home, you made it yourself. If you got sick, you prayed.
Life was simpler then, and it was
a lot worse. If there is one thing we know for sure, it's that
there were no good old days. We're living longer now, and we're
healthier. We know a lot more about what's going on around us,
even if sometimes we don't seem to care.
But that doesn't mean all our fancy
advances have done us good. Sometimes they've done us wrong. This
has bothered me for a long time, more each year. Every time I
write about some new gadget or another new gizmo, the part of
my mind that deals most with conscience runs up against the part
that gets excited over a bigger television screen or a faster
computer. Usually, the gee-whiz side wins out, but sometimes I
sense a sadness that tells me another story.
What about that big TV screen? Can't
you just sit closer? What's so special about that faster PC?
What are you doing that's so important you can't wait another
millionth of a second or two? And there's a more basic problem.
Things are changing too fast for many of us. Someone needs to
put on the brakes.
I used to have an ordinary telephone.
It had a cord. It always worked. Now I've got something that fits
in my shirt pocket. It doesn't have a cord. It has batteries.
Do you know what happens to batteries?
Do you know what happens to your little cordless phone when the
thing that happens to batteries happens when you're waiting for
an important call?
I used to have an ordinary VCR. It had a record
button and a play button, and a couple of other little things
you pushed. When you wanted to tape a TV show, you waited until
the show came on and pushed the red button.
Now I have a fancy VCR. It has 15
little buttons on the remote control, and other buttons on the
VCR. They don't even match. If you want to record a TV show that
comes on tomorrow at 9 p.m., you stay up late tonight reading
the VCR manual so you can set the timer.
I used to have a slide rule. I even
learned how to use it. No one under 30 knows what a slide rule
is any more. It had only one moving part. It didn't have batteries.
It didn't have a timer. It always worked.
Now I have four pocket calculators.
One of them works, but I've forgotten which one. Gradually, without
even thinking about it, I've been learning how to multiply complicated
numbers all over again, in my head.
It's simpler, and it doesn't need
batteries. My math doesn't always work—I was never good at
numbers—but it has an advantage no calculator could ever offer.
It's something old Bill would identify with if he ever came back
on his birthday—on our birthday.
Happy birthday, Bill. And good luck
with that VCR.
technofile:
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