Granted?

For many of us, we wake in the morning, rise from a comfortable bed, use the bathroom for a shower or bath with clean hot flowing water at the turn of a tap. Then we put on clothes that have a lovely feel, perhaps slide into a pair of “slip-in” Skechers and climb into an air-conditioned car that starts immediately, before travelling down a smooth tarred road to work.

Just a normal day. If the traffic is slow, we get annoyed. Yet if we stop for a minute and realise how much we now take for granted, we can acknowledge how much we actually have. This probably happens to every generation, whatever era people live in.

Our lives are better and easier because of the innovations and inventions made even in the last few generations.

As technology progresses, innovations can be constructive or destructive. They are the means; the operator determines their use. Improvement is evolutionary, and change is the catalyst that makes it possible. It is fascinating to see so many improvements in every aspect of life.

What would a person from a different era, say the Romans or Victorians, think of what we take completely for granted? Consider three areas as examples: aviation, vehicles, and medicine. What would the Wright brothers think about the massive jetliners we just hop on board to fly thousands of miles for a getaway holiday? How would Henry Ford feel about cars that are driven all over the world? Would he become apoplectic when he discovered that his dictum of ‘you can have any car just so long as the colour is black’ is violated so widely? What would he think about the improvements in performance and comfort that we have in most vehicles today? 

What would the surgeons of the past make of the amazing advances in medicine? Hip replacements that remove pain and restore mobility, cataract operations that use sophisticated techniques and replacement lenses to return clear sight to patients. What would they make of diagnostic equipment that can scan inside the body in exceptional detail without incisions? Treatments and technologies that are used routinely around the world were unimaginable to them; yet, once again, we largely take them for granted. Would these advances impress them, or make them fearful of how they might be used?

Going forward a hundred years from now, our amazing inventions will seem clunky and simple in comparison. The inhabitants of that era could take for granted their leading-edge products and systems. Progress is never a straight line, and there are inevitably setbacks along the way.

 Yet history has shown us that, despite everything, humanity has endured. We are still here, continuing to innovate, invent, adapt, and move forward. We are survivors, but perhaps we should not take that for granted either.