Last night Lindsay and I had to make a midnight run to Walgreen's to buy some milk. We had already bought some earlier in the day, but that half gallon turned out to border on the disgusting flavor of the kind of coconut milk you use for cooking* and it had to be replaced.
Here is a quick summary of the conversation we had with the cashier. He was a man probably in his late forties:
Cashier: "I'm going to have to run your card as credit."
Me: "That's fine."
Cashier: "Then you'll just have to sign, but it's going to take a while because our machines are running slow."
Me: "Oh, that's okay."
Cashier: "Yeah, technology is great when it works, you know?"
Lindsay: "Yeah I have that same problem at my work sometimes."
Cashier: "The scary part is, if all the computer stop running one day, little stores like this are gonna be toast."
...
What?
Like all the computers? In the world? And they're all totally beyond repair? Like, Y2K?
I wanted to share this because it was really surprising to me that there are people out there who still think that this kind of situation is a potential reality. As though this whole "technology" thing is just a fad. It won't last, and one day all the computers are going to fail. Then where will we be? There won't be any records of any kind! Airplanes will fall out of the sky! Mass chaos!
I think this speaks to a deep misunderstanding of how the world is working right now, don't you? If anything the change will be completely the other way. As computers become more and more essential to our lives, they will become more of a part of us. Computers aren't going anywhere.
*Yeah, I know what coconut milk for cooking tastes like. Lindsay and I went to an Indian restaurant, and the first thing I saw when we got in the door was a cooler stocked with pop and coconut milk. What was I gonna do, not order it? Anyways, it was awful. Unfortunately for me, the waitress didn't know it was the kind you cook with either.
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