A Harsh Functionality

I note this week the deaths of a machine and a dog.

Tonight there is a machine in Texas on death row. Its crime: lack of functionality.

Its execution symbolizes a global end for mechanical devices which perform one function, but only one, even if they're faster and better than anything else in the world.

The demise isn't surprising in the face of the recently conducted Ohio State University survey showing 38% of people would rather speak to a chatterbot than another person.

Even so, Scrooge's lament comes to mind when he asks how the world can condemn the poor and the pursuit of wealth in the same breath.

Do you not admire, say, Mr. Coffin, who, as reported in the Times, at age 90, "first repaired a clock while a pupil at the grammar school in a seaside village of 900 people, and has collected, sold, made and fixed clocks - only those that run on cogs and springs, nothing electric, ever since."

Some of us are trapped, carried forward, clinging - here I am writing on a laptop whose software will carry these words to China after I push a button. Who wouldn't marvel, as Thomas Friedman points out in his The World is Flat at such a system where I may call the barbershop in town for an appointment but talk to someone in India to set it?

Deeper instincts retreat from the threatening vastness of such an enterprise even as I take advantage of a few features at the edges. It makes me uneasy not to speak to the barber himself, while, conversely, it provides great pleasure to visit shopkeepers on Main Street, like Coco at the Hunan Gardens, who worries, not for my lost custom, but for my person, if I haven't been in to take a meal for a while.

What counts more than any marvel of technology are the dear ones of our noble parish who gathered round last Sunday to offer ancient prayers of healing for a bad back.

What carries lasting value is that after I held our Max in my arms last week while the vet administered the injection which ended his suffering, I returned home to a beloved bride to share the grief and take comfort in simple cards received from friends and a sister who show by these small acts their abiding concern.

I'm lost in a world where there's no value bestowed upon an elegant machine with no chips, which, while still outperforming those that do, must be destroyed because it lacks the potential for an increased functionality.

At the same time as I tap into the technological wonders of the whole Flat World from a small town in Virginia, I embrace the life which is found at home.