In spite of living in a technologically advanced age, we long for simple things..
August 11, 2008 (Monday)
Years ago, when the idea of computers was fairly new, I visited a building in Houston and saw a computer that occupied an entire floor of the skyscraper. By 1987, our church at Rockport bought four computers that sat on the desks of the pastor and three secretaries. They had become much smaller. We had entered the era of the “personal computer.”
Those machines purchased 21 years ago had storage devices in them that could hold 10 million bytes of data each. Each storage device cost between three hundred and four hundred dollars. (In 1980, seven years earlier, it cost $4,495.00). Last Friday at Wal Mart I bought a storage device 2” long, ½ “ wide, and ¼” thick, that can hold four billion bytes of data, 400 times as much as those in each 1987 church machine. It cost $19.88.
This miniaturization and new techonology makes possible the cell phone you carry with you, the ipod or mp3 player that many of you use, and other identifiable devices. Beyond those, there are the hidden uses of such things, incorporated into your appliances, automobiles, and plastic cards in your pocket.
To say the world has changed is putting it mildly. These kinds of things are always being upgraded and new things are continually appearing on the market. A person cannot go through a day anymore without being affected in some way by this age of technology, whether he/she is aware of it or not.
“Toto, something tells me we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
In spite of living in a technologically advanced age, we long for simple things: a good meal with family and friends, a nice visit and warm conversation with others, dropping a hook in the pond as we sit in the shade, reading a good book, staring at the embers and flames in the fireplace, enjoying the fireflies at night, listening to the birds and watching them build their nests and raise their young. God gave us a beautiful world. Nothing we have invented or built can compare to it.
Ready? Let’s click our heals and repeat together, “There’s no place like home.”