What technology would you be better off without, and why?
Coincidentally, a week or so before WordPress issued this prompt, my students and I were having a very similar discussion in class. The brief was to name an invention that they would erase from history, although there was a catch: they would also have to live without the benefits of anything influenced by this invention.
Kid 1 suggested erasing the wheel, “just to see what happened”. After realising the variety of exotic food that this would exclude, and the fact that we would have to live on “boring British food, like strawberries”, we decided that this wasn’t worth the risk.
Kid 2 suggested the atomic bomb, because “anything that killed that many people for no reason couldn’t be good”. Then Kid 3 pointed out that electricity was indirectly invented as a result of this. Since he’s a highly intelligent Einstein-in-waiting, I didn’t even bother to Google to see if this was correct and just took his word for it.
Kid 4 wanted to erase social media, as a statement about online bullying. Most of the class appeared to be in agreement with this until Kid 1 piped up, “But, without social media, there wouldn’t be any cat videos!”
A chilling silence befell the group.
“But we could still watch them on YouTube?”
“No, YouTube is still social media because people comment and stuff.”
“So how would we share cat videos?”
“We’d have to record them on one of those old video cameras, and then pass the big tape thing around.”
Suddenly, eking out a miserable existence eating boring British berries, in the dark, didn’t seem quite so bad. Foregoing cat videos, on the other hand, would be a step too far.
Here is one of my favourite cat videos ever. (I’ve posted it before, but it’s worth repeating.)
And here is one of my favourite videos of Louis Catorze, greeting me in the street when I arrived home from work. I always share this with people when they don’t believe me when I describe how loud he is:
I bet you’re grateful for social media now, aren’t you?
You’re welcome.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
louiscatorze.com 
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