My Prediction - JFK November 22, 2013

For those of you who pop in now and then to my world, have seen a shift in most everything I write or post. My tails of llamas (OK bad pun) have become less and less frequent, and my life has shifted as I muse my own aging. And this post is not about my llamas either.

It disturbs me that the 48th Anniversary of the assassination of JFK came and went as a footnote in almost every national and international newspaper, not to mention the entire world of "social media", though not surprising.

After all, the movers and shakers who live in the world of Blackberry's and iPhone, and 3G and 4G hardly have time to consider the death of a President almost half a century ago relevant to anything impacting their lives. But lord help the cell phone provider who crashes, or even worse a natural disaster that pulls down their ability to stay Faced, or Tweeted, or Tubed.  They should pause to consider that the "Space Age" heralded the eventual creation (albeit decades later) of the publicly available PC's, and Mac's, and the internet, and then commercially available cell phones and all it has brought to the world.

Technology is an interesting beast. Henry Ford predicated the mass produced automobile would bring more leisure time to America, because after all we could get where we needed to be faster. How is that working for you now that you can go faster, further, and do it all while linked to your work world 24/7?

But I ramble as I am often wont to do, so I will put forth the following predication:

November 22, 2013 will be the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of the 35 President of the United States. As that day approaches whoever manages to confuse America to electing (or in all fairness re-electing) them to the highest office in the land will scramble to use that horrific day to attempt to link their political battle of the day to the passion and patriotism this country felt about JFK, despite his flaws, and the unity that came for brief moments after the announcement of his death. And yes, I was old enough to remember to grief AND fear of all the adults around me, though not quite old enough to understand why. I am still not sure I am old enough to comprehend it all.

It scares me because there have been no great men of social vision, regardless of their flaws since JFK, RFK, and MLK, not because there are not great men of vision out there, but I would think that the intended consequence of greatness has for the past half century been sucessfully recognized as dangerous.

People state that Steve Jobs was a great man of vision, or that Bill Gates and Mr. Facebook himself are people of great vision. I would suggest that while they may be brilliant, their focus was/is not on making humanity greater, just making technology greater. If you pause to consider what it has done to your lives I believe you will find it has made life more constraining, addictive, and for the unfortunate majority of our future generations numbing to many of the realities they will face.

So my predication is the 50th Anniversary will come and go, and politicans will do everything they can to make sure the media links their names, faces and causes to JFKs charisma in the day, and that nothing will change.

PS.
The llamas say hi.