Thanks for the Technology!
by Tibor R. Machan
In 1972 I bought a Volvo P1800 off the Chevy used car lot in Santa Barbara, California. I owned that car for 20 years and am still sad to have had to sell it in 1992, after putting 250,000 miles on it and driving it back and forth over the USA nearly 17 times.
I recall this now because with a huge blackout in the Northeast it is those in the field of practical science or technology who will have to endure a great deal of finger wagging, I am sure. Yet, how often might one thank the engineers who designed and produced our various technologies -- I certainly did so, silently, extending thanks to the engineers who designed my wonderful car. It was such a delightful vehicle, indeed, and my kids and I were very grateful that we could own and use it. And, by extension, that we have so much marvelous technology available to us.
Today, instead of dissing the folks at Con Edison in New York State, who may on this occasion deserve it, I would like to focus, instead, on thanking the designers, engineers, and doctors after just having gone through my second successful cataract operation. They helped me regain the use of my eyes, ones going bad for over four or so years now, leaving me nearly incapable of reading and driving comfortably and competently. (For a while there I was wondering why the DMV is so lax about permitting me to drive around with eyes that see all roads in what I have come to call "cataract enhanced" ways!) I am sure millions of other older folks could share my feelings of gratitude.
I often think about those people who think up the various useful gadgets we nearly take for granted these days - like the central air conditioning system in my house that makes it so much easier for me to work at my computer, do my household chores, and read the fine novels I love so much during the hot spells of our summers in Southern California. Or the central heat - which I rarely use because after all, I can put clothes on nearly endlessly, whereas even going about buck naked is no relief when the heat gets very high up there but that pleases my daughter a lot in winter time. I think, also, of the people who made the pain-relievers I and millions of others take when we have serious back or other aches, or those who made the supplementary vitamins or... well, you name it. All you need to call up such feelings of gratitude is to notice how one's ordinary life is improved when one has these various products available from the market place. Yes, sometimes I am overcome with a powerful feeling of gratitude and wish I actually knew more of those who make such things so I could thank them personally.
Moreover, I feel very protective of these folks when I hear various critics of modern technology. Today nearly all efforts to make things better for us -- be it based in biology, chemistry, physics, electronics or what have you -- tend to be lambasted by some high and mighty sounding Luddite. Indeed, I have resolved never to be complacent about such attacks, to rise to the defense of these folks who often simply go about the work diligently and competently but do not prepare for being intellectually lambasted by the Luddites of the world.
Greens, in the main, and their kin across the globe tend to be thoughtlessly hostile to those who are devoted to improving our lives. Such critics give voice to an asceticism that no one who has ever had the benefit of microsurgery or ambulance transport could consider sensible. Take as an example the folks at Oregon State University, who follow the ideas of "Simply Beautiful," a program developed by Sam Quick and Robert Flashman, whose motto is "To be content with what we have at this moment, to bloom where we are planted - this is the wisdom of gratitude, this is the very foundation of a simply beautiful life." They want everything to be simple again (as if things ever were simple). They need not preach to me their reactionary notions, especially after I have just had my eye sight restored with the aid of modern and certainly not so simple medical technology.
Of course, we pay for these inventions and creations and those who design them mostly make a decent living, so they do not go unrewarded. But few actually thank them, and especially the middlemen who invest in their work and take financial risks with these designers, engineers, and inventors. They tend to be overlooked, yet they ought to be honored more often. (Now and then I think the Nobel Prize is misdirected to the pure scientists, who are having so much fun already, leaving the practical implementers less prominently acknowledged.)
Anyway, here is a toast to those who try to figure out ways to make our lives better for us in those more or less small ways by which someone like me, for example, can continue to read and write and drive about safely. And to the doctors - in this case a Dr. John Kleinberg of Orange, CA - who apply their technology so proficiently.
Thank you all!
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