Friday, May 30, 2014
Privacy in the modern world is really an illusion
“Yeah,” I replied, closing the lid of my laptop. “About that….”
Undeterred, he went about his rant how we live in an oversharing world, where people seem to believe “that every single errant thought, routine errand and bowel movement is worth a chirp!”
“Tweet,” I corrected.
“Whatever!” he said disgustedly. “My point is what the hell happened to the idea that other people should keep their noses out of my business? In my day, people used to get upset when they found out other people were eavesdropping into their private affairs. Today it seems like people get upset if the world doesn’t know what they are doing!”
I smiled sadly at the Elder Geek. “Welcome to ‘The Brave New World’ of Edward Snowden and the NSA, WikiLeaks, Google and Big Data.”
“I think you mean ‘Big Brother’,” he corrected.“Whatever,” I said.
The Elder Geek frowned. “How can people be so casual about this? Doesn’t anybody care that there is all this private information floating around about them for everyone to see!”
“Why should they care, when no one else does?” I asked. “With red-light and security cameras popping up on virtually every corner and their own personal devices spying on them, people just seem to take it for granted that privacy in the modern world is really an illusion. Like the citizens of Oz, we’ve all been fooled into ignoring the man behind the curtain.”
“Why that’s outrageous!” the Elder Geek stammered.
I nodded. “You’re right, but people have become so enamored by the magical powers of their smart phones, TVs and thermostats; tablet computers and customer loyalty cards and the convenience of Internet shopping, that they don’t seem to care that both their every physical and online move is being tracked. Like junkies, we’ve become addicted to our high-tech devices and now we can’t live without them.”
“Well they should learn!” the Elder Geek grumbled.
“Easier said than done. Unlike the good old 1980s, it’s nearly impossible to keep all your data private. Julia Angwin, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal , tried it and wrote about it in her book, “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.” Among the things she tried was not using Google nor any of its related services and she even resorted to carrying a “burner” cell phone, but she still found that for the average person, it was nearly impossible to keep her anonymity online. You can hear her talk about her experiences in this interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” program.
“So what you’re saying is that there is no hope and we’d better get used to Big Brother…or Big Data or whomever watching our every move?” he asked resignedly.
“No. Not exactly. Earlier this month, the European Union Court of Justice came out with a ruling stating that people have ‘the right to be forgotten,’ and part of that right includes letting people erase traces of their digital past from the Internet.”
“Well that’s encouraging!” he said brightly.
“Yeah well don’t get your hopes up yet,” I said trying to put a damper on his expectations. “As much as I agree with that sentiment, the courts over there are going about it the wrong way. They are putting the onus on Google to delete that information from their search results.”
“So what’s a matter with that?” he asked.
“Well it’s like asking a carpenter to put a self-closing hinge on the barn door after the horse has escaped, instead of putting a lock on the door BEFORE the horse got out,” I explained. “Just making Google exclude the information from their search results won’t get rid of the data. I know it’s hard to believe, but there are other search engines out there besides Google. (Anyone remember AltaVista? Yahoo? Dogpile? Bing?) And it won’t stop the company that originally collected that data on you from using that outdated information in the future. What the courts should have really mandated is that the companies who collect your data be legally obligated to purge their information on you every few years. Then we will be getting somewhere.”
The Elder Geek pondered this for a moment. “So how do you propose doing this?” he asked.
I gave him a mischievous smile. “Why sharing it with everyone on Facebook and Tweeting about it with #DeleteMe of course!”
Sunday, April 27, 2014
There’s Gnome place for technology in this yard
 |
| A rosebush by any other name in my garden would still be just as dead. |
Where the hell are my #@%^! lawn gnomes?!
 |
| These are NOT the Gnomes, I'm looking for.... |
The kinds I've been waiting for are the ones that live under mushrooms and come out at night when everyone’s asleep, clean up the garden beds, pull weeds and keep the lawn neatly trimmed.
I've lived in my house now for over 15 years and I have seen neither hide nor hair of them! And it’s not like I don’t have enough mushrooms growing in my yard. Just ask my neighbors…
If I don’t see evidence soon that they are doing at least some of my yard work, I’m going to evict their pointy little heads once-and-for-all!
Now I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’m not lazy. In fact, I’m a die-hard DIYer and look forward to doing projects around my house. But what I like about most DIY projects is that after you complete them, they are done.
Completed.
Finito.
There’s no going back week after week and doing the exact same mindless task over and over again. No pulling weeds, no raking leaves or cutting the grass.
Those are jobs best suited to lawn gnomes or technology.
Unfortunately in this super, high-tech age of Internet enabled everything, no one’s come up with a way to take the drudgery out of yardwork.
Apparently there ain’t no App for that!
 |
Ok, so a robot mower made by Cyberdyne Systems
and controlled by Skynet may not be such a good idea after all.... |
What could possibly go wrong with devices like these?
I mean besides the whole robot-apocalypse thing, where all our machines and computers go all “Skynet” on us and decide to wipe out humanity.
Sigh….
Well, I guess until the geniuses at Apple, Google and/or Microsoft realize we don’t need yet another lighter/faster/smarter phone, tablet PC, watch, thermostat, refrigerator or eyeglasses and start making devices that really do make our lives easier, I’m going to have to rely on those lazy, good-for-nothing lawn gnomes to help me with my yard work.
Maybe I should start looking for them in the spot where my house elves have disappeared to. ’Cause judging by the layer of dust on my furniture, the dog hair on my rug and the laundry piling up in the hamper, they have haven’t been working lately either.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Everything I Really Need to Know I learned on YouTube
As a writer and lover of the English language, it pains me to admit that when it comes to acquiring a new skill, I’m more a visual learner than a word guy.It’s not that I can’t pickup how to do something by just reading an article or following a step-by-step guide in a book or magazine. But give me a series of pictures to look at, and I seem to instantly understand how something comes together (or, more often, gets taken apart).
I’ve always been that way, from the model kits I used to put together as a kid to the woodworking magazines I read today, which feature lots of photos and diagrams of projects in just about every stage of construction.
Even in my day job as a systems technician for a Pennsylvania-based news media company, I find myself turning time and again to visual guides to keep the company’s ever-growing array of high-tech gadgets running.
Contrary to popular belief we computer geeks aren’t born with an innate knowledge of how to breakdown and fix every piece of technology that lands on our workbenches. Sometimes even we need to turn to the Internet to find out how to repair something.
Oh and speaking of Apple, my next trip to the site was to find out how to replace the digitizer (glass screen) on an iPad, that one of our employees had cracked – again. I’ve also used a Youtube video to help me replace the broken headphone connection on my third generation iPod and numerous times to find out how to accomplish a number of special effects in Adobe Photoshop.
also found myself turning to it for non-work stuff. I’ve mostly used it to find out how to do things in my woodworking shop, like cutting dovetails or tuning up some of my tools. But on occasion I’ve used it for more mundane things like finally figuring out how to fold a fitted bottom sheet of a bed, and that got me wondering what other “life- skill” videos I could find on the site.
So I recently went looking, and was somewhat surprised by the answer.
There were hundreds if not thousands of these types of videos! Now some of them are probably of dubious quality and I wouldn’t necessarily trust the self-proclaimed experts who made them, but the are still a staggering number of them. This reminded me of a book written back in the late 1980s, by a man named Robert Fulghum: “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
But just as important as learning how to share and “doing unto others as we have done unto us,” are knowing how to bath ourselves and taking care of our own personal hygiene; dressing; eating, feeding and cooking; doing house work; managing money; shopping; transport and even child and pet care.
And if you somehow missed learning any of these skills while you were growing up, YouTube has you covered. I found plenty of videos which cover these topics and I’ve sprinkled them throughout this blog. Some are down right amusing and some helpful (Yes, I did finally learn to fold that fitted bed sheet from a YouTube video).
So Mr. Fulghum, I respectfully suggest that you revise your book for today’s “Internet Generation.” I even have the title for you: “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned on Youtube.”
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Microsoft's Mixed Message
Move to Windows 8, or keep buying Windows 7
You know things aren’t going well for Microsoft, when HP, a major computer manufacturer, announced last month it is bringing back the company’s previous operating system, Windows 7, because of “popular demand.”Now, it seems the Redmond, WA-based software giant has been forced to extend the deadline for the sale of new computers with Windows 7 Professional preinstalled. Originally the cutoff date was to be October of this year. No word yet on what the new deadline might be.
While the announcement, which was made on Feb. 14, was, at least in my opinion, a real valentine to the business community, it does not affect the sale of any of the Windows 7 Home versions. After Oct. 31, PC manufacturers will not be able to sell computers with those versions installed.
According to Shad Larsen, senior business program manager for Microsoft’s Windows business planning team, this move has nothing to do with the end of support for Windows XP, which is to take place on April 8.
Instead, he said, the company extended the deadline because Windows 7 “remains the largest part of Microsoft's installed base” and is still in the midst of being deployed by its business customers and Microsoft didn't want to make it difficult for those businesses to keep purchasing it.
Or in other words, the business community hates Windows 8 just as much as I do, and won’t upgrade to it.
"Windows 8 still has bugs that cost time and frustration, and the interface is still too new to force-feed to industry,” said David Wilson, IT manager at VectorCSP, in an article on the IT blog site TechRepublic. “Microsoft would be well-served to leave Windows 7 Professional in production and open for support for the foreseeable future."
"Windows 8 is not ready,” added Ingo Dean, IT director of EastWest Institute, in the same article. “Allowing us to continue to get Windows 7 alleviates our need to seek alternatives such as MacBooks or Chromebooks.”
After having to support just a handful of Windows 8 PCs at my day and side jobs, I can’t agree more with them. Windows 8 is extremely buggy and user-UNfriendly. I’ve had USB drivers suddenly stop working so no USB devices could be used until I upgrading to 8.1; wireless connectivity issues on PCs running Windows 8, when the same machines with Windows 7 connect fine; and even issues trying to update to Windows 8.1. It seems in their infinite wisdom, someone at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea if only some versions of Windows 8 can upgrade to Windows 8.1 through the Windows Store, while others require you to download a Windows 8.1 ISO, burn it to a DVD and then do an in-place upgrade!
So is it any wonder that PC sales have dropped by double-digit percentages since the Introduction of Windows 8?
According to an article on the business website, Bloomberg.com “Every PC maker except China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. experienced declines as businesses chose to install Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system on employees’ computers instead of the newer Windows 8, Jay Chou, an analyst at Framingham, Massachusetts- based IDC, said in an interview. Consumers also shunned Windows 8 in favor of smartphones and tablets, which can handle many of the same tasks, he said. …Consumers have found Windows 8’s redesigned user interface disorienting, and prices for touch-screen enabled computers that run the software are still too high, he said.”
It seems that Microsoft is finally taking these complaints seriously, because this past Sunday, (Feb.23), the company announced that is planning to release another update to Windows 8 in the spring to make it easier to use with only a keyboard and mouse.
Again, the fact that Microsoft needs to release another major update to its product only a few months after it released the last one, (Windows 8.1 was released in the late fall of 2013) doesn’t bode well for the success of its latest OS.
While I hope this new update will make Windows 8 a more stable and useable system, I’m not holding my breath. For now, I’m just happy I’ll still be able to get new computers with Windows 7 for a bit longer.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Beware! Big Data is watching!
In his novel, “1984” he predicted a dystopian future in which the government sought to control the populace by spying on them.
But 30 years after that story was supposed to have taken place, it’s not “Big Brother” we have to fear, but rather “Big Data.”
Since computers began integrating themselves into our lives back in the early ’80s, we have become so used to our near constant connection to the Internet that those of us who are actually old enough to remember life back in 1984 can’t imaging having to live again in that pre-interconnected world.
But our modern ability to have all of humanity’s collective knowledge (or depending on your point of view, cute cat videos) at our fingertips has come with a dark side that even Darth Vader would have feared. The rise of “Big Data.”
Big Data, for those of you not familiar with the term, refers to companies who track our every online click and use that information to compile a virtual personality profile of us. These dossiers are then used to either target us with ads or are sold to other companies anxious to get their hands into our wallets.
Now businesses collecting data about their customers is nothing new. It has gone on since at least the ’90s – if not earlier – with supermarkets using customer loyalty cards to track purchases and print coupons targeted to the buyer on the backs of register receipts.
 |
| The Nest Smart Thermostat |
I generally don’t have a problem with this type of thing, but what set the alarm bells off in my head was the recent announcement that Google – perhaps the biggest of all the “Big Data” companies in the world – recently bought a small company called Nest, which makes a line of smart thermostats.
Through the magic of the Internet, I can already see you staring at your computer/tablet/phone screens making that “so what?” face. But let me tell you why you should be concerned.
Nest’s line of smart thermostats are designed to learn your schedule, program themselves and enable you to remotely control them via an app on you install on your cell phone.
Again I can see you making that “so what?” face. Right now you are probably thinking, “I hate having to get out my 150 page manual every time I need to change the temperature or reprogram my current set-back thermostat!”
Well so do I, and I do like the idea of a thermostat automatically adjusting itself to fit my schedule. The problem I have with it, is with the Internet connectivity Google is likely to enhance in future models.
Remember Google is perhaps the world’s biggest and best-know search engine, whose name has already become a verb. It is in the business of collecting data on you. It does this every time you search for something on the Web, send a message from G-mail, watch a Youtube video and to some extent when you use an Android-based phone. So what makes you think Google is not going to be collecting data on you from its newly acquired line of smart thermostats and smoke/carbon monoxide detectors?
But what, you may ask, can Google really learn about you from just your thermostat settings? Off the top of my head I can think of at least a half-dozen things: where you live right down to the street address, what kind of heating (or cooling) system you have, how warm/cool you like your home and most importantly when you are home and away and when you’re likely to be awake and asleep.
Now I’m no conspiracy theorist and I do generally believe that Google does try to live by its “Don’t Be Evil” corporate motto. But let’s face it, Google is now a multi-billion dollar public company, that, like any business with lots of investors, is in business to make money. And the thing Google uses to make money with is our data. So to expect them NOT to use the data they’ll collect from the thermostats and other home automation products they’ll create is unreasonable.
How might they use this information? Image this scenario. Just as you are getting back from vacation, you get a call or text from some person or company you’ve never heard of or done business with before.
“Hello Mr. Smith,” it will say. “Welcome home! I hope your trip was a good one! We’re calling/texting because we see that your furnace filter is due to be replaced in the next three days. Well right now we’re offering a sale on filters especially made for your Acme Furnace, Model ABC123. And oh by the way, we see that your unit hasn’t been serviced in the last six months. For an extra $69.99 we could send a tech out to your home at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Mockingbird Heights, New Jersey. From your schedule it looks like Fridays you get home from work early and we do have a 4 p.m. slot open. If that’s not good, we have Saturday appointments also. Since you like to sleep until noon on the weekends, we could schedule it at 1 p.m. if that works better for you.”
If you don’t find the fact that your house just told a complete stranger that you weren’t home and what your normal schedule is down right creepy, I don’t know what will. I try very hard to discourage even my own neighbors from knowing when I’m home or not, so my house won’t be a target of burglars. But with my house blabbing about my schedule to the entire Internet, I just might as well get rid of all timers for my lights and keep my doors unlocked.
Okay, so I’m exaggerating a bit, but the fact that my private schedule will suddenly be public knowledge is no exaggeration.
And I do mean public knowledge.
Because if the recent Target credit card hacking case and Edward Snowden have taught us anything, it’s that no data is completely safe. Make no mistake, the data coming from Internet-enabled home automation devices like these smart thermostats would be a gold mine to some hacker; low paid, ethically-challenged systems operator or even a government spy agency.
You think the Cryptolocker virus that struck at the end of last year was bad? Now imagine instead of locking up all the data on your computer hard drive and ransoming it back to you, some Internet miscreant hacks into your heating system on the coldest day of the year.
Want your heat back? Then send $25,000 to this PayPal account or freeze!
Attacks probably won’t be as blatant or obvious as that. Smarter operators or even our own government could just tap into the data your thermostat sends back to Google and use it to determine when you come and go. Then they could sell that data on some black market to burglary rings looking to target specific zip codes or use it themselves to break into your home when they know you will be out.
I realize all these things are pretty unlikely and there will no doubt be some safeguards on the devices to prevent exactly the sort of abuses I talk about here. But the idea that there will be some gadget or gadgets inside my house, watching me and learning all about my habits and reporting them back to some anonymous, faceless entity – even if it’s for totally “legitimate” purposes – is still creepy. It smacks of the exactly the kind of surveillance state George Orwell warned us about all those years ago.
It’s almost enough to make me want to go back to those carefree, pre-connected days of 1984.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
New Year’s Regenerations
This year hasn’t been an especially good one for me, and, as you’ve probably noticed, this blog went practically untouched because of it.
Almost right from the start, things became very stressful, as we adopted our newest four-legged family member on Jan. 5, and I struggled to….
Hey! What give me that back!
 |
| Merlin |
Ifz hez thinkz it was stressfulz, jus imagine howz it waz
for mez! I’z had to brakez in TWO newz peopuls!
— Merlin
— Merlin
Get your paws off my keyboard!
And get down from my chair!
Bad Dog!
Now where was I?
Oh yes.
Talking about my dog.
Well Merlin, a half black Lab, half pointer, is the youngest dog I’ve ever had. He wasn’t quite two when my wife and I rescued him, and although he is one of the sweetest, most good-natured dogs around, he turned our house and our lives upside-down for the first few months we had him. He came to us with not much in the way of house manners, wasn’t potty trained, barely knew any commands and had a penchant for escaping from our yard or house, very quickly earning himself the first of his many nicknames — Houdini.
Then just when he was beginning to get the hang of being a well-behaved, family dog, I got sick.
Very sick.
In late April I cleverly managed to get pneumonia.
But not just any pneumonia.
Because I don’t do things half-way, I managed to get double pneumonia!
I wrote about that experience after I got out of the hospital and it was the last time I had the strength or motivation to do any real writing this year.
It took me until August to fully recover and get my strength back. Prior to that it was all I could do to get up and go to work each day without getting totally exhausted and needing to take a nap. Some days I even got so tired from taking a nap, that I needed to take a nap to recover from getting up from a nap!
Needless to say, I was excited to finally feel like myself again, and looked forward to spending those hot, dog-days of summer floating around my pool in my “floaty” chair, listening to my iPod and writing.
But this year my hopes were dashed, because the summer in the Northeast was quite cool and rainy. As a result, I didn’t get much pool or writing time in.
Instead, I turned to one of my other favorite leisure-time activities – woodworking and DIY-ing.
I had a whole list of projects I wanted to get to this year and was all set to begin them in the spring when I got sick. Now with my “woodworking season” more than halfway over, I spent all my free time over the next three months in my garage-workshop banging out those projects.
The good news is that I managed to finish all but one of those projects before the cold weather arrived in November, forcing me to close down my shop for another season.
(Note to family: If I had that 20’ x 20’ foot HEATED workshop
I’ve been asking for for years, I could have finished everything!)
I’ve been asking for for years, I could have finished everything!)
About this same time, one of my beloved aunts died and the sadness that surrounded that occasion further sapped my will to move from the couch.
Of course, because I’m Jewish, and we Jews need to feel guilty about something or our lives won’t feel complete, I began to fret about this lack of motivation and the fact I kept putting things off. Even things I liked doing, like writing.
However, I didn’t have the motivation to do anything about it, until Christmas day, when, ironically enough, I was lying on the couch watching the “Doctor Who” Christmas special: “Time of the Doctor.”
(Admit it you were wondering
when I was going to get around
to relating this to something geeky, weren’t you?)
to relating this to something geeky, weren’t you?)
I found the show especially appropriate to my mindset, as this year’s episode featured the title character’s regeneration.
Now, for those few of you unfamiliar with this once cult-classic, and now uber-popular BBC sci-fi TV show, “Doctor Who” is about a time traveling alien who can change not only his entire appearance but personality when his body is injured or dying. He was only supposed to be able to do this 12 times, and Christmas day’s episode saw the 11th actor to play The Doctor handing off the role to someone new.
This “regeneration” and change of roles happening so close to the end of the year got me thinking about New Year’s resolutions.
It occurred to me that New Year’s resolutions can be more
than just those annual empty promises we make to ourselves. It our chance to be
like “Doctor Who” and regenerate, completely changing ourselves.
I’m not talking about running out and getting massive
amounts of plastic surgery to totally change our face and bodies.
(But would getting a little more hair on the top of my head be too much to ask?).
While there certainly are a lot of things I’d like to change about myself, the one I thing I’ll concentrate on this year is my tendency to procrastinate.
I let stress and my long illness during the first part of this year eat away at my motivation to do anything more than what was absolutely necessary during the second half the year. I kept telling myself I didn’t have the energy to do something, so I’d put it off. Even things I like doing like writing got put off.
But no more.
Starting Jan. 1, 2014, I’m going “regenerate” and become less of a procrastinator and stop putting things off, including my writing.
Now I know that one of the surefire ways to ensure a New Year’s resolution fails is to set unreasonable goals. So I’m not going to promise you I’m finally going to finish my novel that’s beginning to make George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series look like a short story, nor am I going to promise that I will post something new to this blog every week. What I AM going to do is make sure I put up a new post at least once a month, finish a short story I’ve been working on for a friend and maybe get even get a few more chapters written for my novel.
Will I succeed?
I don’t honestly know. Only time (and Time Lords) know. The rest of you will just have to stay tuned…
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
When time-traveling, always remember a doctor…
 |
| The second, fourth and tenth Doctor always ready to handle a medical emergency. |
Science fiction is replete with ways to travel through time.
 |
H.G. Wells Time Machine may be a Steampunk fan's
dream, but there's no room for a doctor.
|
But if I had my choice of how I got to travel through time, I’d choose an old, beat-up, British Police Box, piloted by a lonely, eccentric old man with the coolest case of Multiple Personality Disorder – er, I mean, Dissociative Identity Disorder – in the universe.
By now you’ve probably figured that I am referring to the TARDIS from the long-running BBC TV show “Doctor Who.” Sure it’s impossibly bigger on the inside than it is on the out, and style wise it alternates between looking like a ship made of cast off cardboard packing materials to a place constructed completely out of spare parts.
So why choose the TARDIS?
Because of the guy who flies it. His name is derived from the word we use to describe our healers: doctor. And in the 50 years he has been gallivanting around time and space on out TV sets, he’s shown he knows his fair share about medicine.
As I post this blog, I am still recovering from a pretty bad case of double pneumonia. You don’t hear much about pneumonia these days except around cold and flu time when doctors recommend you get vaccinated against both these diseases. Everyone thinks pneumonia is a minor illness now. Sure it used to kill millions, but with the invention of penicillin we’ve licked it! Today people think it’s no worse than a bad chest cold.
 |
Okay, so this DeLorean comes with a doctor, but would you
trust a guy who steals plutonium from Libian terrorists to
treat you when your sick.
|
I can now tell you from first-hand experience that it’s not. It’s every bit as bad as it ever used to be.
And the most insidious thing about pneumonia is how quickly it sneaks up on you before almost totally incapacitating you.
On the Friday they captured the Boston Marathon bomber suspect, I came home from work with a mild-to-strongish headache, which I assumed had been triggered by my spring allergies. By Monday the headache had gotten worse enough that it actually drove me to see my doctor without anybody having to talk me into it first. By Wednesday I had to leave work early because my simple headache had grown about a thousand times worse and been joined by chills (and probably an intermittent fever), a cough that was bringing up mucus, fast heartbeat and as you’d expect, exhaustion.
By Friday I was back at my doctor’s office and was sent home with some antibiotics. I gave these new drugs some time to work, because for a while in the mornings I’d feel a teeny-tiny bit better. But by the end of the day, I’d feel even worse. By Tuesday I knew something was really wrong and by the time I actually got to see my doctor instead of one of his assistants, he knew I had pneumonia almost right away and admitted me to the hospital.
 |
| The Taredis may lack style, but at least
it comes with it's own doctor!
|
Well it gave me a lot of time to just lie around and think about thing
s. Things like what the town I live in looked like 100 years ago and what might have happened to me if I had caught pneumonia back then.
Among the time periods I’ve always wanted to travel back in time and experience was the era that began just prior to World War I and ended with the beginning of Prohibition. I always considered this period the real “start” of the 20th Century. In 1900 the United States was still primarily a nation of farmers. But right around that 1912-1914 mark something happened and America “turned the corner” and quickly began heading down the road that would make it the world’s leading industrial giant. In those few short years, America blossomed into the “modern” country we now recognize.
Part of this fantasy was walking down my current home town’s main street and seeing it appear not so radically different than it appears today. By 1914-1915 automobiles were already beginning to replace the horse, so I’d still see cars outside the shops and homes along Broad Street. They’d just be Model Ts instead of SUVs, minivans and sedans.
Also since electrification followed the railways out in the suburbs and my town used to be a major rail stop between New York and Philadelphia, it follows some of the many houses built in our town at this time were built with electric in mind rather than gas. Hence the electric poles would be there and perhaps even a few of the electric street lights I take for granted each night.
Even the fashions worn by my town’s men-folk wouldn’t be all that utterly unrecognizable. Sure their cardboard collars looked formal and stiff, but the business suits they wore weren’t really that radically different from what my dad used to wear to work each day when I was growing up in the 1970s.
I guess I thought experiencing this time period would be like walking through those old-timey sepia-toned photos we see in books about the second decade of the 20th century. And I guess that’s the fault of time-travel shows like “Doctor Who.” They seldom dwell on the darker-side of time travel, instead focusing their time on the fun and adventure of experiencing a bygone age.
We aren’t often reminded that the “good old days” came with things like the Pneumonia Pandemic of 1918 that killed 600,000 people in the United States and more than 25 million people worldwide. In 1918 there weren’t any antibiotics yet, as the discovery of penicillin was still 10 years away, so people who caught it, either burned with fever until their bodies developed an antibody to the virus, or died. Given how I felt during those first 14 days before I got to the hospital, I can easily understand why so many people died, and it wasn’t a pleasant way to go.
So fellow time travelers, you can keep your Steampunk flying chairs and fancy sports cars.
I’ll wait for the time machine that comes with its own doctor any day of the week.
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