Technology 101- Back to the Present

The world is obsessed with change.  Over 100 million people have voted to come up with a new list of world wonders, namely the New 7 Wonders of the World. These include man made structures such as the Roman Coliseum, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China.

Similarly in the world of office technology, we are inundated with suggestions on how to improve our offices.  I get as many notices monthly about why my law practice should go paperless or why I cannot practice law without a Blackberry or Amicus software as I do about the latest in the law of contracts or torts.

While the quest for state of the art technology has its merits, I feel we are over teched and  I believe we should reflect and focus on a different set of world class wonders.

I am thinking about simple inventions that are inherent wonders in terms of cost, longevity and utility.  Never mind senseless structures or complicated machines.

My list consists of items that have been around for ages now but in my view their value has yet to be assailed or dislodged in the big scheme of things.  Here they are:

1. The pencil.

This tool never lets you down.  Keep one in your car if you need to make a quick note and on a frigid arctic day, unlike a pen, the graphite will not freeze.  And unlike a computer, you don’t need updates, upgrades or security.  I have yet to use a pencil and suddenly a warning appears on my paper reading, “This message can easily be read by other parties”. 

Stay out of my pencil Norton. 

And if it does not write too well, just sharpen it with a 50 cent sharpener.  Unlike your anal retentive PC, to get it working again you never have to shut it down.  Nor do you need customer support.  You’ll never see a pencil user calling some 800 number and have some voice tell him, “push 1 if your eraser has fallen off”.

The pencil; a friend indeed.  And in the pinch in even makes a good Q- tip (the eraser end that is).

2. The toilet plunger.

I can probably buy enough bathtubs to fill the Taj Mahal with all the plumbers’ fees I have saved by using a five dollar toilet plunger to unclog sinks and toilets.  This stout yeoman  will vanquish most clogs in seconds, saving you $80 for the plumber just to ring your doorbell. And these things don’t become obsolete. The plunger I still have in my office has outlasted over a dozen computers I have formerly owned. 

I don’t know the origin of this device. I have tried to find out the inventor’s name but he remains a mystery. Hitting “toilet plunger inventor” on Google didn’t do it.

The plumbing union probably harassed the guy asking him to sell out the patent to them. When he persisted in refusing to sell, they probably surrounded his house and burnt a wooden monkey wrench on his lawn.  I don’t know whatever happened to the guy but he likely died unknown and a pauper. Whoever the inventor was, I tip my hat to him.

And speaking of fire, the next awesome tool is:

3. The match.

Imagine how we take this item for granted. Kids nowadays figure the match has one purpose, to light a smoke.  The caveman would have been clubbing himself in awe were he to have been given a book of matches.  If as some philosophers have said, the world is made out of wind, earth, water and fire, then we have 25% of the world in the palm of our hands in a little matchbook that might read, “Joe’s Delicatessen.” These days the matchbook might also read, “www.joesdeli.com.  But that’s another story.  We won’t go there.

4. The postage stamp.

Say all you want about the post office, the fact is that at least in theory, if you put a 51 cent stamp on a letter in Montreal it will likely be delivered to its intended recipient in Kelowna British Columbia within a day or two.  To send it to Sydney Australia  you will have to put on about a dollar’s worth of stamps but within a couple of days, it will sail by the Sydney Opera House and reach its destination. 

True, postal service is not perfect. Sometimes it seems as if that letter you are sending from Montreal to Kelowna or even to a neighbouring Montreal address, has gone to that address via Sydney Australia.  In fact I am starting to suspect more and more that this is the case.  But in principle the lowly postage stamp still does it’s job.  And unlike emails, it will not bring you a virus.  It can however bring you junk mail.  If it does, you can take out your matchbook. Or try flushing it down the toilet, if you have a good plunger on hand.

5. The post it note ( aka the stickie ).

This is a newcomer in the scheme of things, but I find that the stickie is the greatest invention of the last 50 years. My law office would come to a complete standstill without the stickie.  A day does not go by wherein I do not leave my assistant notes reading, “Please get Henry Wiggly in this week” or “I am going to Tim Horton’s”.  Scratch pad notes can move around and emails may not arrive instantaneously as we would like them to. But once you put a yellow stickie on your secretary’s computer screen, it’s there and she can’t miss it. No way she’ll say, “Sorry, I didn’t see it, my computer was down.” And they make great bookmarks too.

And actually there are some days that do go by where I do not ask her to get Henry Wiggly in. For that matter I don’t even have a client called Henry Wiggly.  I use his name to protect confidentiality.  I don’t know even who Henry Wiggly is. Maybe he is the guy who invented the toilet plunger. Who knows?

6. Deck of playing cards.

I don’t care how many video games you can load into your computer but the best game in town you can still hold in your hand, to wit, a box of playing cards. These 52 cards are as useful and ubiquitous as they were when we were growing up playing simple games such as war and fish. And if you have nobody to play with, you can always play one of the dozens of varieties of solitaire. A deck of cards takes playing with yourself to a new dimension. That’s as far as we’ll go on solitaire. 

Nor will cards raise the furor and excitement that electronic devices do on an aeroplane. I have yet to hear a purser announcing,”Please put away all playing cards as playing poker can affect the aircraft’s navigational system causing it to stray to Cleveland”.

A word of caution: be careful not to bore people with those inane magic card tricks;  especially people carrying matchboxes.

7. The wheel.

Yes, let’s save the best for last.  In my book this is still the greatest simple wonder of the world. This becomes even more evident when you start having increasing backaches.  Every time I go to court I wheel my briefcase right up to the counsel table.  Sheer ecstasy.  Not quite ecstasy but it does feel good.

And how many people do you see at airports these days with luggage without wheels?  Only the hearty macho travellers. Or the youthful backpackers.  Actually there are more.  I am talking about the rest of us who often start our trips with luggage with wheels but when we get to our destinations, the baggage handlers send them down the luggage carrousel with the wheels missing.  But that’s a different story.

Whenever I watch a construction worker moving a heap of dirt in a wheelbarrow, I feel like going over to him and asking him to offer his gratitude to the wheel and to say, “Thank you wheel” .

I have yet to do that actually, fearing an undo response as in his previous job he may have been an Air Canada baggage handler.

Let us all pay homage to the simple, eternal and inexpensive wonders of the world. Never mind the Taj Mahal, or the Coliseum.  They would probably overflow and flood without a toilet plunger. Forget the HP scanner, i-Pod or the Blackberry.  Too complicated.  Just take out your pencils and a stickie and write down these magnificent 7.