When I was about nine years old I would sit and watch Lost in Space, in the days before Star Trek.
We all thought we would wear silver suits like the Jetsons and drive hover cars. I remember thinking that in 2006 I would be too old to enjoy all of this.
The little girl in the picture may be barefooted among the daisies, but she is just about to tread on some dog shit.
Not quite what I imagined, eh? We are polluted, wartorn and millions die of starvation and apart from the advent of personal communicators we do not seem to have gotten beyond being able to buy 200 different kinds of training shoes or exotic, inedible fruit.
There is progress, I admit. I walked into a big fruit and veg shop in Newcastle in 1974 and asked for avocado pears, and they had no idea what I was talking about. The poor girl assistant produced a can of del monte pears in syrup from the back of the shop.
And what about the future?
"Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest. Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skill that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone." (Alivin Toffler) click the name for info.
1 comment:
The Highland Council Social Work Department suggested that Danielle Reid died because the Social Work Department did not have enough computers or trained computer staff. All that was needed was a procedural policy to deal with a warning given by relatives 1 year earlier - and you don't need a computer to do that. Danielle Reid was put in a suitcase by her mother and dumped in the river - a computer would not have saved her, but we are so reliant on computers nowadays that commonsense does not prevail. I have written to my MSP as the paper suggests that no one should be held accountable and responsible in the social work department because they have "suffered enough". Suffering includes giving the head honcho a 27% pay increase to £95,000 pa. And she failed.
On another issue: The Scottish Executive have just released a consultation paper concerning an ageing population - you might like to take part!!
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