READY, FIRE, AIM: Something Entirely New

What has been done will be done again;
There is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say, Look! This is something new…?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

— Ecclesiastes Chapter 1

But that was then.  Fifth century BCE.  Back in those days, nothing much changed. You got out of bed before sunrise and milked the cow and fed the chickens, just like you did every morning.

Now and then, maybe you heard a rumor that the king had died?  And after a great deal of palace drama, a new king was crowned — maybe one of the dead king’s relatives?  Or maybe someone unrelated, but very ambitious?  But nothing really changed. Wars, taxes, famine. Same old, same old.

Of course, once in a blue moon, something truly new did come along.

The wheel, for example.

And later, the steering wheel… and the rear view mirror.

The printing press was a pretty big deal in its day. Most of us would’ve never read Ecclesiastes otherwise. (Actually, most of us haven’t read it regardless.  But at least it was there on the bookshelf.)

Quite a few “new” things have come along during my relatively brief time on the planet.  (“Brief” relative to stories that have been around since the 5th century BCE.)

Some of the more notable new things, not in any particular order:

Unleaded gasoline

Cherry Coke

Reality TV

Emotional support animals

Birkenstocks

Deep fakes

Spam

When I mention “Spam”, I’m not talking about the canned meat product, because that was invented before I was born.  In 1937, in fact.  It was indeed “new” at one point, of course, but had become an essential part of American life by the time I came along.

The “Spam” to which I’m referring arrives daily in my email account, and in my text messages, and in phone calls.  This type of “Spam” was also new at one point, but quickly became “old”, if you know what I mean.

If you look at the list above,  you can see that about half the “new” things have made life better, and about half have made life worse. Not everything that’s new is necessarily desirable.  (In the case of Cherry Coke, it’s a matter of taste.  I happen to like Cherry Coke.  Many people don’t.)

I was going to include “No-fault divorce” in the list of new things that have come along since I was born, because the first U.S. state to establish no-fault divorces — California — passed their new law in 1969, when I was five years old and my parents were still married.   But as it turns out, the Russian Communist Party instituted no-faulty divorce in 1917, and the Kingdom of Prussia allowed no-fault divorces as early as 1757.

By the time Darlene and I got divorced, every U.S. state except New York had a “no-fault” law. We understand there’s always someone to blame when a marriage falls apart, but proving which party is at fault… when both parties are willing to lie through their teeth?  Needless to say, I was thankful for the no-fault approach, even though it wasn’t exactly new.

Computers are sort of new, but were already causing trouble before I was born. The first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, the ENIAC, was designed by a couple of college professors in 1944.  It was funded by the U.S. military, weighed approximately 27 tons, and its first job was to calculate the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb.

My iPhone 15 can also act as a computer, and even though it’s not the newest iPhone model, it can do calculations approximately one trillion times faster than the ENIAC.  It cannot, however, calculate the feasibility of a hydrogen bomb, because I haven’t yet downloaded that particular app.

Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) is a recent development that would likely cause even the author of Ecclesiastes to sit up and exclaim: “This is something new!”  Unfortunately, it has not yet reached the point of actually being “intelligent”.

In my opinion, the most exciting new thing to come along in recent years is the Willow Wave Wearable Manual Breast Pump.

The collection cup fits inside your bra, and because it doesn’t use electricity, it can function even during a power outage. From an article in Popular Science:

Motor noise can make pumping that might be otherwise undetected during a video call or in a quiet office practically impossible. The Willow Wave solves this problem by replacing a humming motor with an old-school, manual pump mechanism — but without sacrificing the mobility that makes wearable pumps so appealing in the first place…

Its ergonomic handle prevents hand fatigue while pumping and connects via 34 inches of adjustable tubing, giving users genuine freedom of movement and total control over their device’s hospital-strength suction. The result is a wearable pump that’s finally quiet enough to use anywhere — even during that morning video meeting.

Which compels us to mention another new thing.

Morning video meetings.

Not everything that’s new is necessarily desirable.