LOOK, MA! NO BUTTONS! Now, just when I have about become used to getting along very well in a "push-button" world the "Bose" boys bring out a fine new, home super audio system which features a total lack of buttons across the front. Not a button, lever, arm, toggle or touch area!
All such operating aids are to be found on a "remote control" said to be about the size of a credit card assuming, of course, that you can find it. Merely calling a gadget a "control" seems to be enough to assure it being missing at the exact moment it is most needed? When was it you last lost a remote control unit for TV, music box or automotive door that was not immediately needed?
I realize all this, of course, is deemed to be "progress and I'm in favor of that, but, as usual, I have some difficulty fitting progressive thing things into my rather static way of accepting things progressive. It takes a while, before I become accustomed to such changes. I think a great may people feel the same way; not opposed to change but comfortable for a time when established rules and regulations are being modified or expelled. I rather like having a bunch of buttons and dials to tend to went I'm showing how I do something. The more it looks like the control board of a B-747 the better I like it even though I may not understand all it can do.
We, at one time, could enjoy toggles, switches, latches, and other means of bring about sudden exchanges or modifications. I remember quite well how our old Atwater-Kent table model radio with an imposing Bedouin round horn on or of its black, crackled-finished metal case case, would - at my bidding - keep right on playing a sprightly "Coon Saunder's Night Hawks" number,beer from Kansas City even after I had pulled the electricity plug form the wall outlet. It was a what was said to be self -regenerative, or something like that, but having knobs to turn, switches to throw and wheels to spin helped, put on a better show and making it all happen.
That was much more impressive than the old, discarded oatmeal box old oatmeal carton of rounded cardboard which held the first crystal radio ever heard. We heard some fine static out of Schenectady and Philadelphia made possible as I recall gently sliding a short piece of wire along an extended wire strand. When push button mechanisms came in, we went wild for awhile.
Yessirre, Bob! Them was the times! Dials, buttons, switches and now - we're back to nuthin'!
But, it has happened pretty much the same in other fields of mankind's endeavors, as well. Take, for instance, the case of olden times when two primitive men happened to meet at the one log which had formed a bridge by falling across the creek, had to decide, by combat, who was going to cross first. Each selected[a sturdy stick from the forest and they violently would seek to flail each other other into the flood swept creek beneath them!
We have made real progress in that one ever since "Star Wars". Now, we see our two men in deadly combat hitting at each other - not with heavy sticks but,rather light sticks.
We have come a full cycle of some sort, it would seem. You just watch: control buttons will be back some day.
A.L.M July 10, 2005 [c586wds]
