...but there are such things as free slurpees.
A good friend of mine used to joke that 7 Eleven gave out free slurpees on his birthday. Of course, it wasn't quite because it was his birthday, but rather for the more prosaic reason for it being the eleventh of July (more proof that 7 Eleven must be an American company; else they'd hand out slurpees on the seventh of November). But nonetheless, an amusing idea.
Today is twenty years since his birth. Have a slurpee in his honor, eh?
4.7.05
Jingle-jangle
After a longish absence, I bring you an odd thought:
It's always a fun exercise to try and see what themes historians of the future will draw out of our times as being unique or representative of change. Undoubtedly, rapidly proceeding industrialization, revolutions in communication and electronic media will be some of the obvious ones. Others that people speculate about are the death of nationalism (heh, they're a bit premature on that one, but meh), the 'space age', dramatically improved healthcare, etc.
But what about a random little sidebar in a history text? What are those little examples of how life changed for us compared to those before us? I posit that one possibility might be remarkably simple: keys.
Look in your pocket - how many keys do you have? On a rough count, I've got eight or nine - four for my home, another couple for my parent's place, a bike lock, a key or two for work, a mail key, etc. And I'm remarkably lightweight on keys - I don't have any vehicles, nothing complicated at work, no P.O. boxes, nothing. Most adults have dozens of keys, all for various obscure purposes. (A caveat - for now, I'll just talk about developed nations in urban areas... that's a remarkably large portion of the population that is likely to be focused on in histories for this era, so I think I'm safe in working on with those.)
Now, how many keys did that average person have one hundred years ago? Not as many, but still a decent number, right? What about two hundred years ago? Okay, that's a lot fewer. And add another hundred years, and probably next to no one had keys except for jailers.
I don't know the exact reason for this - probably something to do with the rise of cities and the greater ease of fencing goods for quick profits. I would suggest, though, that it hints at an underlying societal concern with personal security that increased in the last few centuries. Think about it - you all have dozens of passwords, encryption schemes, keys, firewalls, deadbolts, etc. There are whole industries focusing on providing better security - with either something that you know (e.g. passwords), something you have (e.g. keys) or something you are (e.g. biometrics) (thanks to a friends' father for those distinctions). Are we so much more worried with security because our goods and property are so much more valuable now? Or do we have a preoccupation with imagined terrors for some obscure psychological reason? I don't know; I'm just pointing out an interesting phenomenon.
But think of all of the subtle ways in which society is shaped by keys. The bare minimum of things that people always take with them include keys (and, my guess would be, wallet and cell phone). You hear the jingle-jangle of keys everywhere - it's ubiquitous. People can even tell who's approaching by the sound of their keys or of the way they look through their keyring to find the correct one. Giving keys to one's home to another person is taken as a sign of trust. The examples go on - make up as many as you want. It's an intriguing thought, no? I wonder what it says about us.
In reality, of course, I doubt anyone would think this was important enough to stress, except perhaps in some poor history grad student's thesis. But fun to speculate nonetheless.
It's always a fun exercise to try and see what themes historians of the future will draw out of our times as being unique or representative of change. Undoubtedly, rapidly proceeding industrialization, revolutions in communication and electronic media will be some of the obvious ones. Others that people speculate about are the death of nationalism (heh, they're a bit premature on that one, but meh), the 'space age', dramatically improved healthcare, etc.
But what about a random little sidebar in a history text? What are those little examples of how life changed for us compared to those before us? I posit that one possibility might be remarkably simple: keys.
Look in your pocket - how many keys do you have? On a rough count, I've got eight or nine - four for my home, another couple for my parent's place, a bike lock, a key or two for work, a mail key, etc. And I'm remarkably lightweight on keys - I don't have any vehicles, nothing complicated at work, no P.O. boxes, nothing. Most adults have dozens of keys, all for various obscure purposes. (A caveat - for now, I'll just talk about developed nations in urban areas... that's a remarkably large portion of the population that is likely to be focused on in histories for this era, so I think I'm safe in working on with those.)
Now, how many keys did that average person have one hundred years ago? Not as many, but still a decent number, right? What about two hundred years ago? Okay, that's a lot fewer. And add another hundred years, and probably next to no one had keys except for jailers.
I don't know the exact reason for this - probably something to do with the rise of cities and the greater ease of fencing goods for quick profits. I would suggest, though, that it hints at an underlying societal concern with personal security that increased in the last few centuries. Think about it - you all have dozens of passwords, encryption schemes, keys, firewalls, deadbolts, etc. There are whole industries focusing on providing better security - with either something that you know (e.g. passwords), something you have (e.g. keys) or something you are (e.g. biometrics) (thanks to a friends' father for those distinctions). Are we so much more worried with security because our goods and property are so much more valuable now? Or do we have a preoccupation with imagined terrors for some obscure psychological reason? I don't know; I'm just pointing out an interesting phenomenon.
But think of all of the subtle ways in which society is shaped by keys. The bare minimum of things that people always take with them include keys (and, my guess would be, wallet and cell phone). You hear the jingle-jangle of keys everywhere - it's ubiquitous. People can even tell who's approaching by the sound of their keys or of the way they look through their keyring to find the correct one. Giving keys to one's home to another person is taken as a sign of trust. The examples go on - make up as many as you want. It's an intriguing thought, no? I wonder what it says about us.
In reality, of course, I doubt anyone would think this was important enough to stress, except perhaps in some poor history grad student's thesis. But fun to speculate nonetheless.
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