Undreamed-of Gadgets

Some 65 years ago, the author Gladys Taber was writing about gadgets and her concern about the effects of innovations and inventions yet to be dreamed of.  She saw our human frailty in that once we have one wonderful gadget, we tend to crave even more, always wanting the next wonderful thing.  We pad our nests with luxuries, thinking that they will somehow buy us happiness.  When Gladys Taber wrote that happiness isn't found in the push of a button, she couldn't have imagined that some 50 years later, the world would be at our fingertips, perhaps not at the push of a button, but at least with the swipe of our fingertip on a small, hand-held screen.  I'm not against our amazing technology, for I benefit from it, but it is disturbing to me that the minute you buy a piece of technology, it's outmoded and the advertising engines rev up with even more ferocity to convince you that the next latest thing is what you really need to have, not the thing you just purchased.  How do we find a happy medium in an increasingly consumptive and changing society?