I stumbled across a Wired magazine article titled "100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About" and it got me to thinking. First, I am solidly on the path to never having children – something that is likely best for all prospective people involved. Second, I was convinced that the article would be heavy padded, or in someway fluffed up with bits that are so selectively applicable as to make one wonder if there should be any reason for them to be widely remembered by anyone. Also, it being Wired, I felt pretty confident that it would be almost all tech related (though to look at the home page, I would have to conclude that the magazine has given itself over to film promotion).
But, as recent times have been hastening the end of the modern bookstore as we know it – and there is an effort to replace the book itself – I have to admit that I have a good deal of dread about what the implications are on the things I assumed would always exist.. Actually, I have a little bit of faith that books will be with us so long as we can keep civilization together. After all, the tablet is clearly inspired by the PADD from Star Trek and all of the Captains were shown reading honest to God books, so books as we know them should be fated to survive. Then again, J.J. Abrams can destroy that, too.
Still, one has to imagine that in order to get to 100, the list has to include some dubious choices. And just why am I not letting these hypothetical children of mine know about some of them? I know about laundry mangles, butter churns, washboards, ticker tape, teletype machines, gramophones, mimeograph machines (and of course the Ditto machine, but I it saw in use), the telegraph, kinescope, and a host of other now out-dated implements or technologies that have had no direct impact on my life. Why am I raising my children in a perpetual now that denies what came before? Sure, there are some things I wouldn't concentrate on. 'Hey, kids, back in my day – okay, my father's day, because I never handled them – spark plugs needed to be replaced with shocking frequency. What's a spark plug? Well, it was a part of the internal combustion engine.'
So I thought I would give some thoughts on a few of the selected items that made the list of 100.
