newfangled gadgets

I'm just old enough that I remember the world pre-internet.

It's fair to say I'm from the last generation that can claim that.

It's funny - we don't often talk of the world pre-internet anymore. History before the internet is like history before Christ: so far in the past that we speak of it as a vaguely interesting, but ultimately dead period.

Although I proudly claim the title of Luddite, I am not a part of the ugly mob that decries the internet as evil. I will not condemn cell phones, Blackberries, iPods, laptops, et cetera. I have no intention of going back to a world without them.

Because I like the world they create. I like that I can chat with someone in Brazil, New Zealand, or India at little cost from my home. I like that I can maintain daily contact with friends I otherwise would have forgotten.

But has the world really has gotten smaller?

Or did Cap'n Jack Sparrow have it right when he suggested the modern world just has less in it?

Because no one can deny that each technological advance prods an advance in globalization. Or that each advance in globalization sounds a death knell for another aspect of local culture.

I can't help but think, though, that we're wasting the great potential available to us.

A synthesis, I think is called for. A fusion of old and new for the future.

It's something to be wished for, certainly.

"Whoa, Stu," you say, "Isn't that a bit, you know, much for the first post of the fall? And maybe a bit cliche?"

Dear reader, my apologies if I come off sounding like some UN lackey - it was a long summer and the mosquitoes have drawn too much blood off my brain.

I will speak of it no more..today... but think about it. Maybe the Amish girl on the cell phone has it right after all.