I’ll begin this serious discussion on a light note by admitting that I have a high opinion of myself. Nothing narcissistic really, just a bit of an ego sometimes. For example, if my conversation with a stranger turns to travel or what I’ve done with my life, I’ll invariably mention that I’ve been to 97 countries, knowing how that impresses people. Or maybe it doesn’t. I listed those countries elsewhere on this site. If that made me a show-off in your eyes, that’s okay. I’m entitled to a few flaws like everyone else.
Let me add to my immodesty by saying that I am a rebel. From an early age, whenever I saw the crowd moving in one direction, I always went the other way. Some intuition, some basic instinct kicked in and told me that whatever they were doing or saying made no sense, that they were acting like dumb sheep. Not all my intuitions have been correct, but most of them have, and even though I’ve made some mistakes in life – including a huge one, marrying the wrong woman – I never went wrong by refusing to follow the crowd.
This discussion is about the insanity of the technological “progress” that I have witnessed in my lifetime, the blind speed and frenzy of which has never existed in any previous age. But let me make it clear that I’m not opposed to technological advances per se. I’m not a Luddite, as some have accused me of. I’m all for new technology that reduces backbreaking labor, promotes physical and psychological health, improves the natural environment and expands our knowledge. Unfortunately, technology seems to have been almost completely hijacked by people with diseased brains. Since I’m certain that most people reading these lines are considerably younger than I (I was born in 1953) let me tell you what it was like as a child and adolescent in the 1960s.
There were no personal computers, nor do I recall ever seeing a computer. Computers existed, of course, but they were the property of researchers and technicians involved in sophisticated work. If you wanted to locate a book in the public library you went to the card catalogue. School lessons were taught using books or other print publications, on rare occasions a projector screen. You could only take photographs, still or video, by buying and loading film in a camera. Nothing was digital – not clocks, not gasoline pumps, not cash registers, not scales at the deli counter. Nothing was computerized in motor vehicles, which were much more basic than those manufactured in the past forty years or so, which drove many a frustrated, old time mechanic into early retirement as they became more and more complicated to repair. Power windows were found only in luxury automobiles. Other than the radio, if you wanted to listen to recorded music you could only buy vinyl records. No one knew what a security camera was; they simply didn’t exist and no one could imagine that such a thing would ever appear. There were, of course, no facial recognition cameras nor license plate readers, and no EZ Pass. Before entering a highway or tunnel or crossing a bridge that charged a toll, you stopped at a booth and handed the attendant cash, and if you didn’t have the exact amount you were given change. Although television had already become a brainwashing tool, TV sets were simple contraptions that you plugged into the wall, and there was little to choose from compared with today – five or six channels at most, which you could change only by manually turning a dial near the screen because there were no remotes. There were no cell phones, but pay phones were never far away, even in isolated areas. Local calls cost a dime for five minutes and a quarter outside the immediate area. Long distance calls were more expensive, and if you wanted to keep talking after your time was up you’d have to keep inserting more quarters as instructed by an operator who interrupted you. All telephones were the rotary dial type, which meant there were no “menus” and no repeated promptings by a recorded voice when you called a business number. There were no answering machines. If no one picked up on the other end the phone just kept ringing. The push button phone was introduced in 1968 and I can remember how futuristic it looked. Nevertheless, people were slow to change, and in fact my parents never replaced their rotary phone, the one I always used as a boy; they used it right to the end, right into the 21st century. I could go on and on and on, but I think by now you get the picture. If I could live my life over I most definitely would want to live in those simpler, saner times. With one exception, I cannot think of a single commonplace technological innovation of the last fifty years that has improved our lives, and I don’t mean petty conveniences. That exception is the internet, even though, admittedly, it has done more harm than good to young, impressionable minds, with such easy access to perversions of every kind. But the net has also blasted a huge hole through the iron curtain of media censorship; vast national and international communities of decent, intelligent people have risen since its invention, united in the fight against evil that has permeated so many powerful institutions across the globe. It has reassured many of us in the Western world that there are so many others who share our thoughts and feelings, even if only a basic yearning for freedom with little understanding of the dark forces at work, as evinced in the enormous protest marches in Australia and throughout Europe, so totally and malevolently censored by the major TV news stations.
As I recall, it was in the 1990s, with the sudden proliferation of cell phones, that I began to feel uneasy about the surge of technology. It was the constant sight of people using this unnecessary device in public places, indoors and outdoors, that irked me. I have a cell phone myself, the cheapest model made, which I use only for necessary calls when I’m away from home. I keep it off almost all the time. I don’t know how to use any other functions on it, like texting and storing numbers, and I’m not interested in learning. The only reason I have it is because public pay phones have all but disappeared. Yes, mobile phones are convenient, but back in the sixties no one ever envisioned them or felt a need to own such a thing. And then there was the constant upgrading, as if it was important to keep adding new features. We don’t yet know how much brain cancer will result from the proximity of radiation, however small the dose, from heavy use when the phone is held to the ear. Maybe even a new type of cancer will appear, “cheek” cancer, a consequence of young people wanting to look cool and following the crowd by stuffing their phones into their back pockets all day.
This need to keep up with the latest technology has always bewildered me because it makes no sense. I’ll give you an everyday example. I like to bowl. I was in a few leagues when I was young, but in the last forty years or so I shoot a few games alone about once a month for a little fun and relaxation. About twenty years ago the two bowling alleys I patronized – and I’m sure the great majority of them elsewhere – went high-tech, computerizing their scoring system. Before that, you’d simply get a sheet of paper and a pencil at the front desk. Even the dullest first-time bowler could learn in one minute how to keep score; it’s every easy. There must be some kind of fraternity among bowling alley proprietors, as there is in every line of business, whereby they could have consulted each other and agreed not to change a longstanding, easy and efficient system. But no, they had to change with the times. I don’t know how much it costs to reconfigure an average-sized bowling alley of, say, forty lanes, but I imagine it runs into the tens of thousands of dollars at least. Furthermore, the new systems come with new problems. The slightest irregularity will mess up the score or disrupt the cycle of every frame, so that you now have to start fiddling around on the new electronic control panel, and if you can’t figure it out, you have to go to the front desk and get someone who can. Add to that all the new glitzy overhead videos that appear when you roll a strike or spare. Who needs any of this garbage?
Unnecessary technology has invaded so many different businesses. I’ll tell you about the home heating oil industry which I know firsthand. Halfway through my eight-year employment with a certain company, my boss handed over the reins to his son, who had never gotten his hands dirty, as the saying goes, and was pretty much useless, though he was always friendly with me, and I liked him on a superficial basis. He was twenty years my junior and into all kinds of high-tech games. Around 2004 he went to a trade show and was impressed by a new gimmick called digital dispatch. One day he called the six drivers into his office and gave each of us this new handheld device, which doubled as a telephone, and explained how we were going to start doing things. After each oil delivery, we had to punch in the account number, along with the gallons delivered and the total charge, then send that information to the office by pressing another button. (We soon learned that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.) We all listened in silence; none of us liked the idea, least of all me. We wanted to do our jobs, not someone else’s. It never occurred to him that he was taking work away from the ladies in the office, who had always posted this information from the delivery tickets we turned in at the end of the day. He also tried making delivery routes with digital dispatch, which turned out to be not as efficient as the routes we arranged ourselves upon being handed a stack of tickets each morning. The whole thing ended up being so problematic and so irritating to everyone involved that he ditched it after a month.
Like so many executives in the transport and delivery field, he also had GPS installed in all the trucks. One day he approached me and said that he noticed I had driven at 63 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone, namely the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway, implying that I had been driving at an unsafe speed, even though he knew I was a safe driver with a clean license, and the cops never pulled anyone over for driving that little bit over the limit. In fact, lots of drivers on the S.O.B. go faster than that. That was my first inkling of how creepy this new technology was becoming.
On this subject I’ll mention something that happened at the last company I drove for. One day a co-worker showed up and soon realized he had forgotten his personal GPS. Every oil driver I’d ever known on Long Island used the standard Nassau or Suffolk County street atlas of about thirty pages, published by Hagstrom or Geographia. There were spare atlases in the office. Yet this man had to drive back home to get his GPS, a one hour round trip, because he didn’t know how to read a map! This blew my mind. To me, it’s like not knowing how to tie your shoes or button your shirt. And he wasn’t that young; he was about 45. And although he wasn’t particularly bright, he was a likable, responsible guy who ran his own landscaping business outside the winter months. That same company, I later heard, hired a much younger driver who also was unable to read a map and instead relied on his GPS. I’ve also recently spoken to a woman in her twenties who said that she is so dependent on her smartphone that she wouldn’t know how to function without it. From what I gather, there are many young adults like her today. That’s scary.
Then there’s the business of microchipping pets, which now seems to be a requirement at nearly all shelters and pet chain stores that offer cats and dogs for adoption. How ridiculous is that, compared to an old-fashioned collar with the owner’s phone number on it? I think most people, encountering an approachable dog or cat that appears frightened or lost, would call the owner. I know I would; I did once with a Yorkshire Terrier and was happy to see him reunited with his owner. But without a collar you don’t know whether or not the animal is a stray, and quite honestly I would not go through the trouble of trying to put a strange cat or dog in my car and driving it to the nearest veterinarian or other facility to have it scanned, not even knowing if there’s a chip under the skin. And I’ve also read that some of these scanners don’t work properly. The whole idea is totally impractical, but easily sold to the gullible public.
I remember the days of buying a ticket for a long-distance bus or train ride without being asked for identification, a ticket that had no name or scannable code on it, which is another recent invention. You could purchase the ticket over the counter at your departure point or from a brick and mortar travel agency. These days, the least difficult way to do it is online with a credit card and a computer-printed ticket with a QR code. In 2018 I went online and bought a round-trip Amtrak ticket from New York City to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Something came up and I had to cancel the trip. Shortly after departure time, I got an email from Amtrak which read something like “We noticed you did not board the train in New York. Would you like to reschedule?” That’s when the reality of the full-blown Orwellian surveillance state we now live in really hit home.
I could go on and on: drones, Alexa, “Ring” doorbell cameras, making purchases by scanning smartphones…. People are so easily persuaded to do new things when they see everyone else doing it. For many years, with a troubled intuition, I’d been asking myself, “What’s the purpose of all this constantly evolving technology? Where is it all leading?” Now I know. It’s in our faces now, if you’re willing to open your eyes. It’s leading to a worldwide Bolshevik slave state, the end of what it means to be human. It’s leading to a world in which globalist psychopaths impose their twisted ambitions on you, me, and everyone else, with no regard for our health and personal freedom, nor any understanding of what it portends for the future of man. It’s leading to their impossible realization of a totally controllable new hybrid species that’s part biological, part digital. Creatures like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are openly saying it and writing about it. And forced injections containing tiny sensors, or implantable microchips, both holding reams of personal information that can be read by cell towers and handheld devices, is their vehicle for implementing it.
They’re trying to turn us into worms with all this cutting-edge technology. It’s not the kind of world we should leave to our children and grandchildren. They and their evil plans must be destroyed. And most of what has come along in the last thirty years needs to be abandoned. Our very survival may depend on it.