It is not the end of the world

Today a tree trimmer cut the fiber optic line that supplies internet service to Keysville.  It seems that the whole world has stopped.  Businesses are closed. The banks can’t access accounts. Life as we know it in 2014 has stopped.

Here at the newspaper we are having to do some dancing but the newspaper will go out on schedule. By tomorrow life will return to normal.

This column is not to bemoan how dependent we are on computers. They are a fact of our lives.  Computers have simplified and complicated our lives but few of us want to return to the pre-computer world.

With every new technology our culture has changed. For most of you gas, oil or electric heating and cooling regulates the temperature of your home. Few long to return to wood stoves except when the bills are due.

We are more mobile today than my parents were when I was a child. The norm then was one car per home. Before that only the wealthy had cars. John Q. rode horses or walked.

Every home has a refrigerator. No more walks to the spring house for cool milk or butter.

Since I still don’t have one I won’t mention televisions.

We have riding mowers, ATVs, weed wackers, chain saws and clothes washers and dryers.

We have can openers and coffee makers and blenders and mixers.

All of our homes and businesses are filled with equipment and machines our grandparents did without.

Each innovation followed the same path: from novelty to useful to necessity.

One of the best stories I ever heard was from a man who remembers when the Rural Electric Cooperative installed electricity in his home. The service was only 30 amps, just enough to run a few lights and a refrigerator.  As his mother was removing the oil lamps, the REA man said, “Don’t throw those away, we don’t guarantee this stuff.”

Today we expect everything to work all of the time. None of us could or would want to return to that “simpler” life.

Today our computers reminded us of just how much our lives have changed in the past ten years.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I.