If humans can imagine it, we can build it. An old saw, to be sure, but the question remains: Should we be building everything we are imagining? The starving, the homeless and the sick in Third World countries might wonder at our priorities. But, perhaps they criticize unfairly. Let them walk a mile in our shoes. Then they’d know how much we need the following articles.
According to a catalogue that came with my weekend paper, we can, for example, now buy, for a mere $424.99 (seriously), a “radio-controlled alarm clock and calendar” which has a projector that “casts the current time and alarm on/off status on the wall or ceiling of a darkened room with manual focus, 180 degrees rotation, and image flip options.” Who doesn’t need one of these? How have I lived 53 years without image flip optionsÉ Now we can lie in our beds and stare at an image of the hours and minutes on the ceiling, a way of finally completing our total enslavement to time, and of being vividly reminded how our time on this earth is slowly ticking away. (To, be fair, this handy little unit also has a barometer and thermometer-hygrometer which help the owner keep track of weather. Very important to keep track of the weather while we’re sleeping.)
Once we’ve paid off that handy device, we can then go out and buy, for only $49.99, a solar-powered house number light which “increases the speed and accuracy of deliveries.” This will ensure that our pizza guy gets our favourite yummy pie to us more quickly, thus preventing the possibility of it cooling off while he drives around looking for our house. This, we all know, can be quite upsetting.
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For $19.99, we can buy pest spike strips to put on our window sills which will prevent birds from landing on them and leaving us with “disease-carrying, exterior-damaging droppings.” No more will poets write about the robin on their sill. I wonder if we should ship a couple hundred thousand of these things off to the Sudan to help out those people over there.
It gets better. For $29.99, we can buy a device that lets us “hear a whisper from up to 60 feet away,” the ideal way to increase our paranoia levels, which are still woefully low. But if it helps us hear whispers from that distance, what other sounds emanating from unsuspecting humans will we now also be able to detect? Or, for $99.99, we can pick up a brass dual shower arm which allows two people to take a shower at the same time without any decrease in water pressure, a sure way to enhance our social lives. For $19.99, we can get a hidden wall safe which is disguised as an normal electrical outlet. To hide our whisper-listening device in, perhaps.
And there’s much, much more in this handy-dandy society we have developed. There’s a kettle with a built-in night light that changes from a glowing blue to a glowing red to show when the water is heated. A waistband stretcher that allows us to get up to another five inches out of those jeans, shorts, pants or skirts. (The hungry have no need for this; they have their own way of staying slim and getting their clothes to fit.) For $239.99 we can buy a device that will shine white light on us and in as little as 15 minutes a day, bolster our mood and improve sleep, if the time projected on the ceiling doesn’t keep us awake.
But by far the most useful thing on today’s market is a device that uses new dual sensor technology (a laser beam) to stop the problem of you or your spouse both backing into your garage wall when putting your car inside. Acting like a traffic light, whenever you drive into your garage the device will guide your car with a green light, then turn amber when you’re in and red to stop when you’re in the park zone. The one down side is that this thing comes in silver only.
Silver only. Well, maybe we’re not as advanced as we think.
©2004 Jim Hagarty
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