In 1970 futurist Alvin Toffler wrote the blockbuster
Future Shock, in which he predicted that
the pressures of accelerating change from an industrial to a post-industrial society
would lead to stress and even mental illness. Certainly the effects of stress
are all around us. In this current election year, many voters are so frightened
of terrorism that they not only want to return to the mythical “good old days,”
but also will accept simplistic, racist ideas like those proposed by Donald Trump
and Ted Cruz. Whether the stress also results from changes in our social environment
is debatable, but it seems likely.
Even driving a car has become more
stressful in recent years. Driving used to be fun. My first car, a VW Beetle,
was easy to drive (once I adapted to the stick shift) and to care for. It was cheap,
too; even as an impoverished young editor, I could afford to buy the car brand new. Gas cost something like 37
cents a gallon, and some gas stations sweetened the deal with free glasses. I
bought the car in Colorado, did some fabulous mountain driving, and drove the
bug home to Chicago. I even named the car Adalia (the generic name for
ladybugs). That may have been a little too cute; however, I really loved that
little car. Selling it when I moved to New York was a major mistake.
Though I am fond of my current car (a
Honda Fit), too, getting on most roads today is no fun at all. I much prefer
riding on a train, but passenger trains are becoming rare, and they are often delayed
while the more profitable fright trains have priority. Like driving cars, riding
on planes was once fun; today, security checks and all the other difficulties
of flying make it a horrendous experience.
I do not especially enjoy driving the
View, either (though handling it is quite easy). Having a high perch from which
to see the scenery, and knowing that a galley and bathroom are just a few steps
behind the driver’s seat, make it less stressful than the alternatives.
Auto-driven cars are already appearing,
and the idea scares me. On the other hand, when I consider the idiotic behavior
of some human drivers, I think a robotic car may be an improvement.
Another major and stressful area of change
is medicine. When I was very young, Doc Brown would make house calls, or
prescribe pills to patients who sat on the horsehair couch in his office. That
was before the polio vaccine and other wonderful medical advances, and I would
never willingly return to those days.
In some ways, though, I wonder if medical
care has declined. Ever since my years as a caregiver, I have carried a spiral
notebook in which I record the results of every medical visit. Practitioners
tend to smile condescendingly when they see it, but many times I have been able
to supply information that has somehow disappeared from their computerized records.
I have been fortunate in finding competent
doctors wherever I have lived, but am somewhat unnerved by office visits when
the doctor or their assistant has sat at a computer asking me questions and presumably
Googling for information about my condition. Being touched during an
examination has become rare. I hope the myriad lab tests and X-rays are more
informative.
Modern medicine relies greatly on modern
electronics. Electronic devices of all types have changed greatly, even during the
past few months. Whatever gizmo I buy is already obsolete. Back in the eighties,
I decided to write my PhD dissertation on a PC, and spent $2000 for an Apple
IIe computer and dot-matrix printer. That was an enormous expense for a grad student,
but I reasoned that I could use them in writing and editing for many years, and
it would be a good investment. Of course, they were out of date within a year,
and in succeeding years I have bought many computers and learned countless
word-processing programs. Sometimes I long for an old electric typewriter with
a correctable ribbon.
The financial world has also evolved
quickly, mainly because of computers. Today even individuals can do our banking
online. It’s a great convenience, but we also need to worry that our bank
accounts and charge accounts can be hacked. Our very identities can be stolen,
endangering Social Security records, investments, and other important assets.
Though change tends to come at a glacial
pace in education, computers and other factors have affected even that part of
our environment. Education seems from a distance to be far superior to what it
was back in the forties and fifties when I attended a two-room rural grade
school and a small-town high school. Materials for students are beyond the
wildest dreams of teachers and students back then. One would think that the entire
U.S. population would be extremely well educated, but it is not. The top students
still do well, encouraged by parents and schools that can afford to help them.
However, it is rare to find clerks in stores who can add up prices without a computer,
and rarer still to see letters that contain no misspellings or obvious
grammatical errors. There are many reasons for this (such as education being a
lower spending priority than defense), but even I sometimes long for a return to the
“three Rs.” Recently I ran across a letter written by my grandfather, who
dropped out of school after the eighth grade. It was much more legible and
literate than some of the scientists’ manuscripts I have edited.
Even the RV life—once a complete escape
from the shocks of modern life—has changed dramatically. Only a few years ago,
an RV might have a small TV set, but other technology was sparse. Today few
owners seem satisfied with less than remote-controlled cable TV, Wi-Fi, GPS,
and a disgusting collection of other electronics. They might as well stay home.
Fortunately, actually using all those
gadgets is a matter of choice. We can still drive off into a national forest or
park, or a public land, and get away from future-shock stress for a while. We
can read, walk, swim, just as people have done throughout history. Any problems
of campground life and maintaining an RV are miniscule compared with those of society
at large.
