TERRY MOSHER
We are going into another and more critical phase of life here in America. There is a confluence of forces that are driving us into unexplored areas and moving us faster and faster into those unexplored regions.
And it all scares me
My age (108) gives me a perspective on this that many don’t have. Many will say what I experienced as a young kid relative to what I experience now is simply expected progress from any living organism that has lived a relatively long time. But is it really progress?
Is it progress to be equipped with devices that connects you with anybody at anytime no matter where you are? I was laughing the other day when I realized in a panic that I was without my smart phone and then took a deep breath and calmed down because it wasn’t that long ago that I got along just fine without one.
Did I suffer when I, and the rest of the world, did not have a smart phone? The answer is no. I coped just fine without one, and I expect you did too.
There was a time when the car I drove could serve as a tank. I once backed it into a telephone pole and the car came away with nary a scratch. Try that today with your new car and the estimate of damages will likely reach into the thousands of dollars.
I would like to have back that 1950 dodge with the terrific radio, the very comfortable bench seats and the suicide doors. Even if I had to stop every 100 miles or so and change the head seal on it, which I might add took me about 10 minutes, tops, to change. That car (tank) would be a very welcomed addition to my driveway.
I’ve been watching a lot of college basketball lately and I can’t stop thinking how much the game continues to change. This may be one area that progress really has improved the product. When I played as a young kid if you moved your pivot foot you were called for traveling. You couldn’t do a jump stop. You moved you walked. Today, I see players take up to three steps and don’t get called for traveling.
And it’s simply amazing how quick players are and how well they handle the ball, even the tall ones. You have guys seven-foot tall who grab a rebound and speed up court, doing cross-over dribbles and passing the ball like they are six-foot point guards. And, of course, they can shoot the ball quite well from the three-point line.
If you have ever watched Washington’s six-foot-five freshman Dejounte Murray you know what I mean when I say today’s game and its players are amazingly quick and fast. I don’t know how many times I have shook my head and wondered how he just did what he did while driving to the basket and putting up a successful shot that defies all logic and the law of physics.
I think even in the past several years the game of basketball has changed dramatically. The ball moves up and down the floor so quick it can make your head spin. It’s like watching today’s pro tennis players smoke the ball back and forth. You better not blink because you will miss a sequence of action
Today we are living in the informational age that is speeding I don’t know to where. Can you imagine what the future is going to be like, even as little as a year from now? What is next?
I do fear what is next. Because of the way we now share information with anybody equipped with a electronic device being able to communicate their feelings and their whereabouts in an instant, the world is becoming smaller and smaller even as I write this. That simple fact is it is changing the way we live, and I’m not sure it’s for the better or progress.
There is a two-fold danger in too much information too fast. China, for instance, is restricting the free-flowing of information from the Internet and is attempting even further censor of the Web to allow the Communist Party that rules the world’s largest populated country better and tighter control of its rule.
There is a downside to that, but first is the second danger that is inherent with too much information. We here in the United States are establishing all different kinds of ways to gather and publish information as fast as possible without any (or little) rule or control over what is being published and by whom.
You got a keyboard or electronic device you can pretty much write what you want without regard to the truthfulness of it. And that is a danger in itself because in the hands of somebody who is great as a communicator can almost single-handily create a wave of enthusiasm for a cause that is built on quicksand and under normal circumstances would not stand up to intense scrutiny.
Fast and free-flowing information is also causing a shift in how we police ourselves because now there is so much transparency because of camera phones that anything that looks unlawful is a cause for righteous indignation by people who may believe they are being unfairly targeted, which in turn causes a cause (such as Black Lives Matter) to rise out of dust and become a public movement that puts pressure on society’s laws to be tightened or even erased.
The result is a population that will constantly be on edge waiting for the next populist movement to rise out of ashes and create demand for justice.
The Communist Party in China has that already figured out and its totalitarian rule remains safe only as long as it brutally stays in front of any possible freedom of thought before it can be thought.
Both examples of the fast-moving information age will fail. We in the West who have so much freedom of expression and so much transparency will at some point implode from over-exposure. Unless some control is exercised too much information will lead to overload and our way of life will short circuit.
I can show that it’s already happening in sports. If you listen to sports radio, or as I call it sports shock jock radio, you know that radio host(s) spend an inordinate amount of air time rehashing the same information over and over and over no matter how inconsequential the topic of discussion. Because we are in the time of year that the NFL is holding its combine (which in itself is overload), shock jocks felt compelled the other day to talk incessantly about the size of hands of quarterbacks. It was the topic of the day and if you have a young kid who wants to be a quarterback it might have compelled you to wait at the door for your kid to come home from school so you could measure his hands.
My point is that too much is too much. I don’t want to know if somebody in Bangladesh picks his nose. But I do have the ability to know that if it happens because of the rapid progress we are making in the informational age. And I would know it almost instantly.
I find it almost amusing that one of the big national discussions we are now having is Apple’s refusal to create a backdoor in its iPhone software so the government can reach in and take any possible information stored on the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.
The fact that because there is inherent pressure on me to not find that amusing is telling enough about my position on how the informational age will likely lead to our destruction, or at the least to a major disruption of our life.
My position, by the way, is Apple should not be forced to unlock that phone. If the government wants it unlocked, take it to China. I’m sure the Chinese government would get it unlocked.
My point on China is that the Communist Party cannot forever remain in control. There will come a future time when the basic human need for freedom of thought and speech will become so great that even the Communists will not be able to put their fingers in all the holes that will develop as a result. It will at some point come crashing down. It may not be in my lifetime, but it will happen.
The solution for both is pretty obvious. There has to be balance achieved that allows but limits some freedom of expression and thought. Too much is too much and too little is too much.
One other thing that scares me is Donald Trump. He is a dangerous man who if given power will bring our way of government down. His election would surely solve our too much freedom of thought and speech problem because he would clamp down on anything he didn’t approve.
He must be stopped.
That’s it for now. I’m drained. I’m looking out the window over the water and the wind is blowing hard and it looks like the tide is moving out. So I’m out too.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.