Brave New World

I can't stop thinking these days about what an amazingly interesting time it is that we live in. I'm also trying not to think of the supposed ancient Chinese curse – May you live in interesting times. And I must say that I'm actually happy that I was born when I was. I'm old enough to remember a time before the internet, before computers and cell phones, and even before calculators (see Patience blog post). Yes, I'll really date myself here; I even remember watching the moon landing on our little black and white TV with the rabbit ear antennae. This allows me to be in this nice little middle ground of being truly grateful and even astonished with the technological advances of the past few decades, and at the same time comfortable enough to tackle the details of learning to actually use these advances.

As much of a fan as I am about these innovations, I'm also not immune to recognizing the downside: the lack of privacy, the false sense of intimacy, the fact that all of this information that we now have easy access to isn't always correct, the increasing need for immediate gratification. But still, the gains far outweigh the negatives, and I am confident that we will figure out ways to address the not-so-great aspects of this brave new world that is increasingly at our fingertips.

One of the benefits to this technology is, obviously, the easy availability of information. Information and knowledge have always been considered prime real estate. It's not difficult to understand why African-American slaves were not allowed to learn to read. Knowledge is power, and the availability of information in our times is the great equalizer. Go to a doctor now and there's a good chance that you, as the patient, will have just as much information on what research is being done relating to your illness as is your doctor.

But Brave New World doesn't only refer to technology. Socially we are also in a time of change; asking ourselves what is and what should be the role of government in providing access to certain benefits to all citizens. And I hope you'll forgive a little tangent here. I am increasingly perplexed at how anyone could possibly be opposed to universal health care. The argument against always comes back to the dislike of "big government." But we are mostly all in agreement that the government is there just for the purpose of giving us a centralized means of providing certain services to its people. It makes sense for the government to play the central role in coordinating a military, and building interstate highways. And, I might add, there's this question - is the system we have now working? Now we have insurance companies making medical decisions. These are the same companies who want to find ways to NOT pay us when a disaster strikes. They are also the same companies who now are asking for government bail-out money because they ran their companies so poorly.

Now that I have that off my chest, I'll get back to my point. On November 4^th I walked out of my polling place and felt the vibration of my BlackBerry announcing that I had an email. I glanced at the little screen and thought, wow, I have an email from Barack Obama, that's kind of cool. His campaign sent me an email asking if I'd be willing to make some phone calls to people who hadn't voted yet, encouraging them to cast their ballot. Okay, it probably wasn't just me that he asked, but I still felt special. And I did make some phone calls. And perhaps some of those phone calls actually pushed the recipient to get over to their polling place and pull the lever.

What this tells me is that we are at a point of great potential and opportunity to enact significant change. We have increasing equity over the dissemination of information, we have technology in place and evolving that allows us as citizens to have our voices heard, and we have an administration that is not only willing, but apparently eager, to hear what those voices have to say.

It's time to step up to the plate.