HOPE TECHNOLOGY FAILS NOT

So here I sit in my recliner processing words on my TV screen.

I just saw on the History Channel the reputed 101 most important inventions. No.1 was the smart phone. The personal computer was fourth. I believe the show ranked the light bulb as five. Edison invented the first dependable bulb in 1879. some six years before my father was born. He died shortly after man walked on the moon.

Amazing are the objects, gizmos, whatevers that ease and even monopolize our lives. Although we are human beings, we perhaps could not live without them now. Imagine losing electric power. Completely.

But our forebears lived without these conveniences. Could we live like our ancestors? Yes, I suppose some could, but with difficulty. Actually, if a terrorist act or series of acts wiped out our means of existing -- electricity, running water, transportation -- not many people would survive, even after getting through the rioting and plunder that would follow such disaster in every affected community, not to mention the ripple effects. Perhaps a few brave people who had taken to the wilderness for solitude would not notice the horror and go on with life relatively unaffected.

Is there any way our civilization could weather a magnetic blast in the stratosphere that wiped out a goodly portion of the electrical grid? Or whatever catastrophe unleashed by an enemy or terrorist cabal? Who really knows? There is hope the government has plans to cope. Maybe not. Maybe incomplete. Maybe worthless. Maybe we could luck-out. Muddle through.

Seldom do we assess our dependence upon technological progress. Entrepreneurial fatalists advertise survival foods that will keep for a quarter century (although they may be attracting Mormons who are instructed to prepare for the future). Other than those, most of us are unwilling to imagine what could happen.

Perhaps no preparation exists for catastrophes of such magnitude. Think back to Katrina and Sandy. (Although those areas now resemble normality.) Yet, somewhere, a newspaper or TV station will survive to second-guess everyone and every governmental entity for failures to prepare.

How well are we prepared to rely on technology and the governmental types using it to uncover terrorist plots and deal with them?  We wish to remain safe, but we expect protection of our constitutional rights. Others of us say survival trumps rights. Only specific aberrations can be examined and used for guidance.

Meanwhile, trust could be the only course.

Nonetheless, the blessings of technology realistically come with potential dangers.

Pessimism is hardly the correct reaction. Hope must reign. Hope, after all, is a virtue. In times like these, virtue is needed. Required.

And planning wouldn’t hurt.