ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 12, 1996 TAG: 9602130060
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
Honest. There's this professor at the University of Wolverhampton in England who is studying us and what air conditioning has done to the American way of life.
That may seem a little strange now that we appear to be on our way to another Ice Age, but there it is, men, and no joke about it.
You can't joke about a title like:
"The Technological Homogenization of America Culture and the Demise of a Sense of Place."
And all this time, you thought it was rap singers who were fooling around with your sense of place.
The professor is documenting instances in which air conditioning has robbed us of our sense of place. This is not true in my case, which is mainly because we don't have air conditioning.
It if helps any, professor, I do have problems with my microwave and those telephones that don't have cords on them. It blows your sense of place all to pieces when you accidentally nuke the bacon for 25 minutes.
I know the professor will find parents with air conditioning who stay home when their little leaguers are playing in 95-degree heat and you could bake a meatloaf on the driveway.
Even so, it's hard to see Americans losing their way because of isolated findings like the above.
But the professor, in a recent letter to an editor friend of mine, explained that he wants to "explore the notion that technological innovation has so Americanised domestic material culture that many Americans have lost their sense of place."
I dunno. That may mean that many Americans are afraid of their air conditioning. It's certainly no secret that some of us are afraid of our furnaces and telephones.
I think the professor picked the wrong technology here.
What about those cards you stick into a cold banking machine - which isn't named Norma and never asks you how you feel - and, ideally, mere money falls out?
That certainly makes you lose something - especially when the machine eats your card without giving you any bread.
Lord knows, professor, computers have caused a general loss of the goodness and simplicity we once knew here in the colonies. I believe they have played hell with our domestic material culture.
Computers become obsolete a lot faster than people do.
And it certainly doesn't do much for your sense of place when your children giggle behind your back about your megabyte capacity.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB