The Rural Voice, 1993-12, Page 12WE WANT
YOUR GRAIN!
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8 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Perspective from technology?
It's Christmas time and we all
dream of getting toys for Christmas:
little kids of dolls and video games,
older kids of wide-screen TVs and
CD players.
There's a rev-
olution coming
in technological
toys. There is, for
instance, "virtual
reality". You
strap on this
visor that lets
you see see a
computer image
as if you were
there. There are
sensors in the
outfit you wear
so that when you
move to react to
what you see, the
computer responds, and you can
affect what you will see. You could,
for instance, fight a sword fight with
a pirate, or fence with Darth Vader.
There's a lot of concern over these
"toys", and with good reason. The
fact is that these "as if you were
there" toys will be exploited for
realistic violence, blurring further the
line between reality and imagination
for disturbed individuals.
If I could control these toys, I'd
program them to let people
experience something of a life they
will never face. Imagine, for instance,
you could put one of these suits on a
bully or rapist and suddenly make
him experience some of the terror of
being the victim for a change.
But most of all, I'd like to be able
to let people experience other times
and other places. If we could let
people have a better sense of what
it's like to live in a barrio in South
America, or a peasant village in
southeast Asia, perhaps we'd have a
better sense of how the world
operates. Heck, even if we could
make people living in Canada today
see what it was like in this country
100 years ago, even 50 years ago,
they might have some perspective to
realize that even with all our
problems today, we're the most
privileged humans ever to live on the
face of the earth.
Humans seem to be able to
remember a grudge or slight for years
(even centuries in some cultures), yet
we very quickly forget hardships we
used to face when we move on to
greater comfort.
I'm not as old as I feel some days,
but the Christmas season brings
memories of how different things are
from when I was a child. Conrad
Black and I may not go to the same
club, but I live in luxury compared to
my parents' life 40 years ago. The
expense of Christmas is now an
inconvenience. For my parents it
must have been daunting to think
about Santa coming at the same time
of the year they were struggling just
to pay the property taxes on the farm.
We probably pay as much for a
Christmas tree today as they
budgeted for presents.
The gulf between life then and
now is evident in nearly every aspect
of life. We played hockey, for
instance, in barn -like arenas with
barely -heated dressing rooms. We
started the season late and ended it
early because we had natural ice. The
fundraising to install artificial ice
seemed a huge task. A couple of
decades later it seemed easier to find
the money for entire new arenas that
were palace -like by comparison.
I was bussed into town to go to
school because our one -room school
house was beyond repair. We had no
gymnasium, no specialists to help
students who had problems, no shop
or home economics classes.
A new car, any new car, was so
unusual it would draw a crowd. Few
farms had trucks, most just a second-
hand (or third or fourth) car. Trips to
town were made a couple of times a
week.
Young couples getting married
did it cheaply and started with little.
They needed that envelope of money
they got at the neighbourhood
reception.
Our short memories give us a lack
of perspective to judge our current
life. If I could just program some of
those virtual reality computers maybe
those memories could be more rea1.0
Keith Roulston is editor and
publisher of The Rural Voice as well
as being a playwright. He lives near
Blyth, ON.
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