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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-09-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views Up the creek? Ifonly! Iwas in the waiting room leafing through an ancient, rumpled copy of Canadian Living when I came across one of those quiz thingys editors use to fill up white space. "List Your Heroes" I think it was called. You were supposed to put down the names of people — teachers, coaches, big sisters — who had helped to shape your life. The first hero to come to my mind wasn't a he or a she, it was an It. "It" didn't even have a formal name, but for every boy in my neighbourhood it was as familiar as the sun in the sky, robins in the garden or porridge on the breakfast table. It was the creek. I never discovered the creek's headwaters but the stretch I knew meandered drunkenly through a swatch of rural Etobicoke, eventually to empty into the Humber River. It was home to crayfish, frogs, minnows, the odd heron, an occasional just -passing -through mallard, at least one fearsome -looking snapping turtle and a constant squawking chorus of red -wing blackbirds, ever-kvetching about the presence of young boys wading and shouting in the shallows. The creek was nothing but shallows in late summer. It shrank to a trickle in August, a mere rivulet you could hop across anywhere. But with the annual snow melt followed by Arthur Black spring rains the creek metamorphosed into a raging cataract interrupted by pools deep and wide enough to float a raft that would hold those same young boys, now transformed into miniature Champlains and Captain Cooks. That's only a small exaggeration. For those few short swollen weeks the creek was our Saint Lawrence, our Mackenzie, and its flooded shores became our new found land. The grand thing about the creek is that it was unfenced. There were no gates or barbed wire or "KEEP OUT" signs. Nobody `owned' the creek. Consequently it belonged to all of us. `Creek'. Funny word. The British hijacked it from the French (`crique'). Then it hitchhiked across the Atlantic with the early white invaders and by 1637, Phillip Vincent, an English chronicler, wrote of a battle between redcoats and 'the Salvages' in New England: "They have overcome cold and hunger, are dispearsed...within the Land also along some small Creekes and Rivers..." It's heartening to think that as Phillip Vincent scratched away on parchment with his quill pen, my `creek' was even then tumbling down to the still -to -be -named Humber River — as it had been, I suppose, since the glaciers retreated. Which brings us, meanderingly, to the latest `anxiety du jour': Biophobia. It means fear of nature. On average, children now spend less than 30 minutes a week playing outside, but as much as seven hours a day in front of one illuminated screen or another — TV, cell phones, Game Boys or laptops. Thus, biophobia — fear of the natural world. Even a flock of noisy birds or a strong gust of wind can freak out some modern kids. Getting outdoors cures that. It also boosts kids' self- esteem and teaches concepts such as problem - solving, co-operation and self-discipline. The creek was huge in my young life. It taught me fear. And courage. It spurred me to see and smell and hear and taste delights not found at home or at school, much less in any handheld device. Maybe our kids don't need more Samsung, Nokia, Sony or iPhone in their lives. Maybe what they need is a creek. What's the opposite of progress? Jn case anyone doesn't know, puns and wordplay are one of my favourite forms of humour, including the joke, if pro is the opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress? In all seriousness though, the opposite of progress is people sticking to beliefs or desires to a point that prevents either them or those around them from moving forward and realizing the great opportunities that progress affords us. Most recently, this has been perfectly illustrated by the launch of the iPhone 7. I don't use an iPhone and I have no intention of spending a couple mortgage payments on one, but that doesn't stop me from watching what Apple and its counterparts do with great interest. Why? Because they are the futurists. Apple has proven time and time again that they do know what people want, even if they introduce their devices at the wrong time. For example, the Apple Newton. The Newton, in case you aren't familiar with it, was a personal digital assistant that was introduced in 1987 and released six years later. The Newton was, at best, flawed, but it was a precursor of things to come. It used a stylus and offered a hand-held computer and, within that, we can see the start of the personal digital assistant craze that would later be dominated for several years by Palm with its launch of the Palm Pilot in 1997. Apple knew what was coming and tried to tackle the project, though it may have jumped the gun on some of the features and launched too early for the hardware to be able to support it. Now Apple is making another move that some have labelled bold by removing the 3.5 -millimeter phone jack from the iPhone. In its latest iteration, the iPhone 7 (which can trace its origins back to the iPod, a music player) has done away with a dedicated headphone jack. I wouldn't necessarily call the move bold, however. The phone connector that all wired headphone technology is based on traces back to the 19th century when similar plugs were used in telephone switchboards. Plugs based on that design have been used for guitars, speakers, microphones and all other kinds of electronic audio. Apple has caught a lot of flack for eliminating the plug because people don't want to spend more money on an adapter that allows them to use wired headphones. Why did Apple do this? Well it undoubtedly did it to increase awareness and sales of its wireless headphones, but, in some way, I have to hope the company did it to make people realize that a technology that hasn't changed much in over a century should be looked at from a different angle. Sure, plugs of different sizes have been created and plugs have been made of different materials for better connectivity or longevity, but the idea of a metal plug connecting to a metal sleeve to transfer audio is undoubtedly the oldest throwback available in modern technology. Look at, for example, the computer. You can't buy a computer with a floppy disc drive standard anymore, they have been left behind because better alternatives are available. Plug types for computers have changed dramatically over the years from pin connectors to simple USB cables. Even television, which still uses coaxial cable for transmission, makes use of HDMI ports to allow for more sophisticated encoding and decoding (or more sophisticated cable boxes) that allow for high definition television. Throughout our lives there are technologies that have fallen by the wayside. Look at VCRs, 8 -tracks, records and casettes. We have no problem leaving these technologies behind when a newer, better version comes out, however, for some reason, people are very attached to having a wired headset with their phone. The obvious solution if you don't want to pay extra for wired headset options is don't buy iPhone 7, but that doesn't seem to be enough. There are people out there who will continue to complain they aren't being consulted when a company decides to change one of its products. These are the people who truly stand in the way of progress: instead of using their power as a consumer and not buying a product, they decide instead to make a stink about an issue and try to convince other people to not buy the product. As long as people continue to take to public forums to complain about unimportant things, they keep the product in the spotlight and more and more people start looking at it, raising its profile. The true power in a market-driven economy is the ability to choose what to buy and that is what leads to progress. Ask Sony about the Beta video playback system or Microsoft about the High Definition Digital Video Discs (HD DVD). Both of those products failed for one technical reason or another, however the instrument of that failure was the fact that people weren't buying them. Sony's Blu-Ray system beat out the HD DVD in the same way that the VCR beat out the Beta system. That is what decides which technologies are for the future and which are for the scrap pile, not people clinging to antiquated technology because they don't like change. Don't waste time worrying about that lack of a headphone jack — if it means that much to you, go find a phone that still has it. The market is watching and listening and waiting to see who will win this fight. Final Thought When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window. — Ogden Nash Shawn 17,ii" Loughlin Shawn's Sense A swift kick in the... After so much discussion back -and -forth and questions left unanswered over the last couple of years, I found it a little surprising when Huron County Council went ahead and joined the Southwest Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT) project with next to no conversation at the Sept. 14 meeting. And I'm worried that all it took was a little bit of money to change minds. No one took bribes or anything like that. At least not that I know of (and I' m not suggesting that). The money I'm referring to is the tens of millions in provincial funding that has been promised to the plan, which aims to expand and improve access to fibre -powered internet across southwestern Ontario. For well over a year, Huron County Council played the role of champion for the little guy. The local internet providers expressed concerns over a big -fish initiative, saying it would swallow up local interests like bringing internet to the "last mile" of Huron County — long a priority of many councillors. Citizen Publisher Keith Roulston has written about the history of the initiative on several occasions. Big telephone companies, and then internet companies, turned their backs on Huron County saying there wasn't enough money to be made for their investment, so local co-operatives rose up and provided great service to locals for decades, first with phone lines and then with internet, investing millions to improve local networks. Now that that foundation has been built, along comes SWIFT and its budget of hundreds of millions of dollars and the expectation is that the big players will view this community as a place for money to be made, where they didn't before. That's how Huron County Council saw it too. Councillors were mighty skeptical of this whole thing. Until recently. So, what changed? I'll tell you what changed. The government — both provincial and federal — each brought their $89.7 million to the table. If this were a Hollywood movie, this would be a scene where Premier Kathleen Wynne and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who would likely play himself — just because he could) walked into a small room, likely with one light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling over a metal table. The two would then flop down matching steel briefcases (that are maybe handcuffed to their arms — I'm undecided on that) and unclasp the dual locks. The briefcases would then pop open and Wynne and Trudeau would rotate them around to show the SWIFT representative across the table that the cases are full of money. All of a sudden the concerns of the local internet providers don't seem so big anymore when you're looking at Wynne and Trudeau and their briefcases loaded with money. The county's SWIFT representative, Roger Watt, insists there will be RFQ (request for qualifications) and RFP (request for proposals) processes, but he admits that for the larger work, the locals just don't have the bankroll. So what's next? He says there will be a role for the locals to play and they'll be given every opportunity to play that role. It'll likely be a big provider that scoops up Huron County. Like Keith said, our pockets weren't fat enough for them in the past. But now, thanks to the hard work of local providers, our money now looks pretty good. Let's hope our local co-operatives, who were there for the county for decades when we had no one else, haven't lost a job precisely because they've done such a good job and there's a compromise involving them.