Safe Progress
Is it any coincidence that the one segment of our society that is progressing - electronics - involves non-hazardous technology? Well - not even, if you count the kooky worries about cell-phone-induced tumors and the ever-so-critical need to properly dispose of used computers. How effete can we get?
How would our society deal with the bold inventions of the past? The automobile kills some 40,000 people a year in the U.S. - what kind of inhumane society would countenance such a killing machine just so a few industrialists could reap billions in profits? Airplanes? Preposterous. They crash, killing their occupants and innocent bystanders on the ground - why hundreds could be killed each decade! And the pollution they would cause - a blight on the earth.
Washing machines and dishwashers? You don't seriously propose pumping billions of gallons of toxins into our rivers and streams, just to save a few hours of work? - the exercise would be good for you. Vacuum cleaners? Allergic children across the nation would be endangered by the allergens they pump into the household air. And speaking of allergies - George Washington Carver would have been thrown in jail for genocide.
Perhaps that's why we don't have flying cars, moving sidewalks, robots raking leaves...because we've turned into a nation of wusses.
How would our society deal with the bold inventions of the past? The automobile kills some 40,000 people a year in the U.S. - what kind of inhumane society would countenance such a killing machine just so a few industrialists could reap billions in profits? Airplanes? Preposterous. They crash, killing their occupants and innocent bystanders on the ground - why hundreds could be killed each decade! And the pollution they would cause - a blight on the earth.
Washing machines and dishwashers? You don't seriously propose pumping billions of gallons of toxins into our rivers and streams, just to save a few hours of work? - the exercise would be good for you. Vacuum cleaners? Allergic children across the nation would be endangered by the allergens they pump into the household air. And speaking of allergies - George Washington Carver would have been thrown in jail for genocide.
Perhaps that's why we don't have flying cars, moving sidewalks, robots raking leaves...because we've turned into a nation of wusses.
posted by ziel | 11/11/2008 10:43:00 PM
2 Comments:
Perhaps we're just pussies about different things.
Everyone I know carries stupendous levels of debt, a thing that would have scared the pants off our grandparents.
JD
Very true. Also, lots of people still do rather brave things - mountain climbing, mountain biking, X-treme this and that - basically pointless stuff. These people were once "those daring young men in their flying machines."
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