"Electronic Mankind"

At 80 you have to doubt your memory sometimes, and I seem to remember having mentioned a man named John Stiles and his odyssey trip around the U.S. with a team of donkeys and mules recently (?). Forgive me if there is some redundancy here. His classic statement about "electronic mankind" having begun to live in a "global concentration camp," would seem to be the utterance of the ultimate luddite.

His feeling is that "nobody is questioning if we should be doing all this. The only question being asked is can we? And without your bar-code microchip laser beam tattooed implant and your holy trinity of personal computer, cable TV, and telephone, you won't be able to participate in the system at all." (This is from the book "Home Work - Hand Built Shelter" by Lloyd Kahn). The "trinity" is kind of quaint, but instructive.

How do we proceed? Well, as an octogenarian I know that my own options are considerably lessened since I am less and less comfortable with the trinities and the communication assumptions/options. Undoubtedly there are people older than I am who are totally conversant and operational within the electronic grid and hemisphere. I know my younger wife is dealing with an educational system which is making it harder and harder just to function with a MacIntosh computer. Where do we go from here, and how will the built-in obsolescence of electronic devices play out with a population which is sinking quickly into poverty. Upgrades, off the grid, anyone?