In the Year 2000....

I happened to come across this interesting Youtube clip, which parodies the old timey newsreels about "the world of the future!" and shows the everyday mundane and pretty pathetic life of a fat guy and his wife under all of our modern "conveniences". (Such as the "magic" of an automated teller, or microwaved burrito, etc.) The idea is clearly to try and show that while we have all these modern conveniences that we didn't have fifty or a hundred years ago, our lives can be pretty bleak.

However, I think the parody makes some inadvertent points in the newsreel--sure, the fat guy and his wife seem pretty depressed, but think of what we'd be seeing in the newsreel if we didn't have such modern conveniences. He wouldn't have been able to take a cell phone call in his car, instead he would have had to get the message when he got home; he wouldn't have A/C in the car and so might have stunk of sweat; he'd have had to spend much longer at the bank waiting for a teller; they'd have had to spend a lot longer making their burrito; he'd have had to get his porn from a magazine instead. If our lives are wasted, it's certainly not because of the technological advances we have now. Without them, we would have a lot less time to waste.