The Marching Morons

Seems to me that for every quantum leap that personal technology takes, we must accept a corresponding erosion in the quality of the experience the technology offers. Have you made a phone call lately? No matter which of the new platforms you're on, most calls are plagued with distortion, static and drop-outs -- and this has become the accepted norm. When once in a while I get a call from someone using a wired land-line phone and I answer it on my 1930s-vintage Bell South set, the clarity and tone are just remarkable. Our new flat-screen non-plasma bedroom TV can only be viewed from almost directly ahead, on plane; makes watching from bed dismaying instead of enjoyable. We watched a DVD of the last Harry Potter movie last night on the big 52" plasma set in the living room. It was so dark as to be almost unwatchable, darker than we remembered it being the theater -- because it had to be filmed at low light to make the 3-D effects work, and to hell with what it looks like in 2-D? The more I see, the more I believe that Kornbluth got it all too right in "The Marching Morons." http://www.scribd.com/doc/23657356/The-Marching-Morons