Swaying with the rhythmic rocking of the train from New York City to Long Island, I witnessed the city morph into industrial buildings, then religious sanctuaries, and finally greenery and open sky. During the hour-long ride, my eyes casually passed over two posters on the wall. They were strategically placed by the marketing company just for that purpose. I glanced out the window then back to the posters, to other passengers and then back to the posters. Without realizing it, I found myself reciting in my mind the sayings on the posters. And they were:
“Burgers without moving your buns”
“Slices on your sofa”
The posters were advertising a delivery service. But, really, how lazy have we become if we can’t even move our butts to get burgers? Do we really need slices delivered to the sofa? Obviously not exactly to the sofa, but the concept of not moving to get food was astounding. Eat unhealthy food and don’t even move to get it.
Here’s my point. Easier is not necessarily better. We need to move our bodies – joints, muscles, feet and brains. Companies are in a race to entice us to use less of our humanness with the promise of “cheap, easy and fast”. But beware! Making things easy is not always in our best interest.
Take for example, the introduction of 5G. The flood of 5G waves will set up a grid that will allow cars to be driven without human drivers. But research suggests that exposure to millimeter waves and ionizing radiation may be responsible for health hazards and damage to plants. With millimeter waves ten to one hundred times higher than radio waves used in 4G and WiFi, many scientists feel that more research needs to be done before 5G is unleashed onto the public. Increased download speeds and autonomous cars might not be worth increased diseases and decimation of forests. There are arguments on both sides, but one thing is clear…we don’t know what are the effects of these frequencies and more research will shed more light. I hope that you will do your own research to come up with your own opinions. But don’t be lured into the faster is better paradigm. It’s not always so.
