I’M CALLING A MORATORIUM ON ALL NEW TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

Forget about the flying cars all of us were supposed to be using before the end of the last century.

Let’s talk about the Promise of The Computer Age.

For regular ol’ human beings such as you and I, the Computer Age — along with its bastard child, the Personal Computer Age — promised us…

“The Paperless Office.”

Take a look around your office. Is it paperless now?

The Personal Computer Age also promised to “free up our time.” Computers would do all the drudge work, while we’d pursue hobbies, personal relationships and intellectual/artistic interests.

You’ve got a lot of free time now for your hobbies? (Okay, if you’re unemployed perhaps I shouldn’t have asked.)

I’m not a Luddite. I was one of the first people in the U.S. to purchase a cordless phone. (Not a cell phone; simply a land line that didn’t require a physical connection between the receiver and the handset.)

I’m not an “early adaptor,” either. Usually I’m content to let others identify the problems in brand new electronic products.

So no, my first computer wasn’t the original Macintosh. It was the Mac Plus. Which means Ross Brittain is the only radio guy I know who was using a personal computer before I was. (Ross did graduate as an engineer from Georgia Tech, after all.)

But I did buy the first portable Macintosh — a 13-pound wonder that we Mac users lovingly referred to as “luggable.”

And years earlier I travelled with a little Brother portable electronic typewriter. That generated lots of oohs and aahs from intrigued flight attendants.

But if you haven’t already figured this out, here’s the revelation:

Technology hasn’t saved us any time. It’s made us busier and more overloaded than any human should be.

That’s Why I’ve Decided To Roll Back The Clock.

My first proclamation as King will be a retroactive ban on all new inventions since the touch tone telephone. (The commercial version that was sold to consumers, not the industrial version of the 1940s.)

Now, that was a useful invention. It saved us time and made our lives easier, not more difficult.

So, nothing invented after the touch tone telephone will be permitted, effective January 1, 2012.

But I’m A Reasonable Man.

Perhaps you’d like to nominate a different landmark technological advance to serve as our “That’s It, No More” boundary.

If so, please share your one recommendation below.

Note that I said “technological.”

Undoubtedly the greatest societal advance of my lifetime came when Blue Bell Creameries became the first ice cream manufacturer to mass market Cookies ’n Cream ice cream. That actually did save work for the rest of us, who no longer had to mash Oreos into our vanilla ice cream.

But the introduction of Cookies ’n Cream was not a technological advance.

So, go ahead and express yourself by finishing this sentence: “If I were King, I’d make it illegal to use any technological device that was invented after the introduction of ________.”

Or say nothing, and come January 1 the touch tone telephone will be the Height of Modernity.