When I was growing up, one of the hit TV programs was “I Love Lucy.” The show stayed around for many years in reruns and I think you can still watch it now through DVD’s, Netflix, Amazon.com and probably several other venues.
One particular episode that stuck out with me was the episode where Lucy and Ethel started working in a candy factory. Their job was to take these pieces of chocolate candy that were coming down a conveyor belt and they were to put the pieces in a box. At first the belt was going at a pretty slow speed and it didn’t have too much candy on it. A little bit later, as you might guess, the belt started coming faster and amount of candy on the belt increased as well.
At first they had no trouble getting all the candy into the boxes, but as it sped up they were unable to keep up. To keep the candy from getting past them, they started putting handfuls of it in their mouth, in their pockets, down the inside of their shirts and anywhere else they could reach. They just couldn’t keep up. After awhile, they stopped putting any of the candy in the boxes. It all went off the end of the conveyor and onto the floor. So much candy. . ., so little time.
I think life in general has kind of followed that same type of scenario. It used to be so simple. Some of you can remember a time when the big new deal was having a radio in the house. Very few “programs” came on at first. And the good ones became a weekly focal point. The family would gather around the radio to listen to the “Grand Ole Opry” or to one of the serial mystery programs that would always end with a cliff hanger that would make everyone have to wait until next week to find out what happened.
Then came the television–black and white at first and then that fuzzy, problematic color. I can still remember when my family got our first TV. To make it work we had to set up a tall antenna pole out back. It stood on the ground and basically leaned against the roof overhang of our house. It was held in place there by a “U” bolt mounted to the fascia board. There were three or four guy wires that were attached to the top of the pole and secured at other places on the roof and on the propane tank out back so that the antenna wouldn’t blow down when the high winds came. The actual antenna was attached to the pole about ten feet higher than the roof.
In order to get good reception, we had to make sure the antenna was pointed in the right direction. If we weren’t getting good reception or if we needed to change the channel, somebody had to go out back and grab the wrench (like vice grips or channel locks) and twist the antenna around while somebody inside the house would yell out “that’s good,” or “that’s worse.” Then you could come in and watch the program. Eventually we were able to get one of those little remote control devices that would turn the antenna automatically when we turned the little dial inside the house. That felt as good as getting a microwave did later. It was wonderful.
As far as watching, we could only get two channels pretty clearly and a third channel with a lot of “snow.” It was the big three—ABC, CBS and NBC. A couple of these channels came out of Lubbock and the other out of Amarillo. Even with this new fangled invention, life was still pretty basic during those times. The news came on at 6:00 in the evening and if we wanted to watch the TV at 6:00, we watched the news. During that time the radio was mostly used to hear country or pop music, the farm report and an occasional major league baseball game. Other than newspapers and some gossipy neighbors on the phone, that was about all the informational input we had access to.
Fast forward to today and the choices are unlimited. Not only do we have access to hundreds of TV channels, there are millions of websites on the internet. And we don’t have to wait for the news to come to us. We can go find it for ourselves. There are dozens of internet search engines, like google, yahoo and dogpile. There are many other resources to access information–Iphones, Ipads, Ipods, Kindle, Tivo, DVD, Netflix, video streaming, audio books, RSS feeds, blogging, emailing, skyping, facebooking, twittering, instant messaging, texting, 3G, 4G, Wifi, Youtube, smartphones, Wii, PlayStation and we still have the option to call those gossipy neighbors. It is a radical change from the early days.
In addition to the many ways we can access information, the actual amount of information to access is rapidly growing as well, exponentially. It is accelerating faster than we can comprehend–which puts us in somewhat of a dilemma. We can’t take it all in. So, like the candy piling up on the floor, most of the information is passing us by. Unlike the candy factory in the Lucy show, we are now dealing with hundreds of informational conveyor belts to choose from. We have the political belts, the various genre’s of musical hits and stars belts, the Hollywood and celebrity belts, the hunting and fishing belts, the health and fitness belts, the cooking belts, the medical belts, the pornography belts, the social media belts, the religious belts, the sports belts, gambling belts, the travel belts, stock market and investment belts and hundreds of other belts covering every conceivable topic. It’s more than we can even imagine.
With all this access to all of these options a dichotomy has been taking place in our society. Along with the option to access and absorb a vast amount of information and knowledge comes the option to put our blinders on and zero in on a very small window of specialty. Many have become totally obsessed and even addicted to a computer game or to the social networking scene or to celebrity worship or to politics or to some other excursion that floats their boat. We now have the option to be totally ignorant about the world around us.
I guess you could say that one of the ironic byproducts of all this knowledge and information is ignorance. Many people become so focused on one particular area that they become virtual experts in that field, but they are totally clueless about most other things. This has been illustrated by several TV shows where an interviewer would ask individuals on the street a simple question like, “Who is the Vice President of the United States? Their response would be a guess or an “I don’t know.” It’s unbelievable, but it’s also reality.
I don’t know what the future holds for our country. We know the old adage about those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. I’m thinking we are moving on down that road. And it appears that soon, the inmates will be running the asylum—or are we already there. Maybe I can find the answer on the World Wide Web. Or maybe I’ll ask my Facebook friends. Or maybe I’ll just download some good ole Jimmy Buffet music, like “Wasting Away in Margaritaville.” I’ll decide and then get back to you when I have the answers. Take care in the mean time.