Will We Ever Become Like “The Jetsons”?

    Let me begin by wishing everyone a healthy and happy New Year full of joy and prosperity for all of you.  Here we are in 2010 and it is almost surreal to be here. I can still remember the 90’s when I graduated from High School and the world was my oyster.  I’m not really sure where all that time has gone so quickly.  It seems like only yesterday that I was dating my husband and planning our future.  Thankfully, we have both been very blessed in our marriage and our life together.

    I can remember when I was a kid and I used to watch episodes of the cartoon, The Jetsons, and fantasize about the technological comforts that the future would bring.  Promises of talking robots and the possibility of living on other planets filled my young mind as I followed George Jetson and his family through their many adventures.  For those readers who aren’t familiar with this cartoon due to their age or where they live, The Jetsons was a cartoon about a futuristic family and their life in space.  In my young mind, the year 2010 seemed so far away that I fully expected to be living like the Jetsons by now.

    Technology has moved at an amazing pace.  Just the fact that most of us own a personal computer and have internet access is proof of that.  Here we thought we were so cool because we had pagers in the 90’s and now almost everyone of every single age has a cellular phone and some of these phones are even smaller than some of the pagers we used to wear on our belts.  I even remember how excited we were as kids when my parents purchased a VCR and we were able to rent videos from the video store.  Now we have DVDs and all those old VHS tapes are obselete.

    I can drive my car and talk on the cell phone through my car radio thanks to Bluetooth Technology.  Also, I am always in contact with friends and family due to texting.  It is wonderful to be able to send a text message in lieu of a phone call when you need to convey information but don’t feel like talking on the phone or don’t have the time for a phone conversation.  Everything is faster, more compact, technologically advanced, complicated, and so easy at the same time.

    We are so fortunate to have all of these modern comforts.  However, we have paid a price for all of these luxuries…Gone are phone calls on your birthday or Christmas from loved ones because it is so much easier just to send a text.  Also, almost nobody writes love letters or sends greeting cards anymore.  I suppose most couples probably save the print-outs of the romantic E-Mails that they sent each other during their courtship.  Our young people hardly spend time reading books because of television and video games.  Pretty soon, we won’t even have books on paper due to Kindles or the famous “Nook.”  I cannot even imagine a world with no books and everyone just reading “books” from a computer screen.

    At what point will technology completely consume life, as we know it?  We have come so far and yet, I don’t we have quite reached the advances that were promised to us by the images in the cartoon, The Jetsons.  I can’t help but think that we should be a little more protective of the simple things lest they be taken away from us completely.  Maybe it is a good thing that we haven’t exactly figured out how to live on other planets yet.  We barely take care of the planet now so imagine how well we would care for it if we thought we had somewhere else to go after we destroy this one…

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