I find it ironic society keeps 'improving things' and I am less enchanted with the results. I have to get this converter box for an older TV for mandated digital TV. Words cannot express the joy I'll feel watching'reality' shows with Paris Hilton & Co improved. I would personally prefer Red Skelton on our old Black and White again, the picture sometimes tweaked by Arizona winds playing with the guy wires on that parasol antannae we had.

There is nothing wrong with advances in technology. What is wrong is the failure of it's users to define what is an advance, and what is merely painting wooley mammoths on cave walls with acrylics after forgetting why we painted those animals.

Firemaking, that most ancient and basic of skills that has translated itself into Saturn Rockets has become commonplace and ill appreciated.

Our oldest forum member, Oetzi carried flint stones, tinder AND a container with a preserved ember.There he was in a resource rich environment, one he knew intimitely. And yet he 'thought ahead'because immediate firemaking was as much survival as convenience.

People are wrongly focused on the intitial production of the ancient flame. People fail miserably in translating said flame to an enduring fire of intelligence.20 matches, firesteel, Bic lighter; It is irrelevant if you lock onto a set piece of doing something, or discard others.