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15. After reading the following selection, write an argumentative passage supporting one of these conclusions: (1) Modern technology is making life more vapid and devoid of involvement. (2) Modern technology is not making life more vapid and devoid of involvement. The Mechanics Of A 41-Year Love Affair by Yaacov Luria I call her Virginia because she came to me intact 41 years ago. In her line of activity, she's considered old, even ancient. I haven't treated her well. In fact, I've abused her. She has long needed a face lift from A to Z, but I've just let her creak along as is. My wife, Miriam, is jealous of my every moment with Virginia. Once she gave me an ultimatum. "Choose between us. This can't go on forever." "Forever? What goes on forever" I retorted. "But as long as her joints hold out, I'll be loyal to my Royal." Virginia is very feminine for a portable typewriter. She isn't an easy mistress. Often she stops dead and won't move, no matter how much I strike her. Sweet talk doesn't budge her either. She can be as adamant as a bank president refusing a loan to his mother-in-law. She moves only if it suits her mood. Not that I haven't thought of leaving her. Bystanders have watched me thumping away at her with one finger and advised me to leave her for a new manual, an electric machine, or a word processor. Why can't I just walk out on her? After all, nowhere is it written, "You are wedded to this 1952 Royal portable until death do you part." My compulsion is a case for a shrink or a novelist. Look up "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham, or borrow the movie. Leslie Howard and Bette Davis give an excellent portrayal of me and Virginia. Recently I happened on an item in my newspaper that convinces me to stick with Virginia. Word-processor addicts have been developing many sorts of malaise, like carpal tunnel syndrome, to name one. They have muscle spasms, backaches, atrophy or enlargement of the backside, and much more. It's all due to a lack of relationship between user and machine. There's no manual activity, no inserting and removing sheets of paper, no frantic erasing, no banging on keys, no jumping with joy as the sheets pile up into sheaves. I have an I-Thou relationship with Virginia. We take care of each other. I suffer when she creaks. My joints could use an overhaul too. At this point, I'll make a confession which, I know, will come as a shock to her: My loyalty to Virginia is a concession to necessity. I'm actually a closet troglodyte. If I had my druthers, I would be sharpening goose quills and dipping them into inkwells, just as G. Washington and A. Lincoln did. I was born too late for that. I came on the scene early enough to make sputter-and-blot friendships with steel penpoints inserted into wooden holders. I met my first fountain pen when I entered high school. Thenceforth I felt an unshakable responsibility to keep my Watermans and Parkers from drying up in the middle of an exam or a long love letter to a girlfriend. If I saved my fountain pen from thirst, everything went right. And write. Ballpoint pens come and go. I don't even have time to give them names. Truth to tell, even pen points in holders and fountain pens are too contemporary for my taste. I wish I had been born in the age of cuneiform tablets. I could have wedged my way to greatness. I would have loved to dig my own clay, roll it flat and inscribe my stories with a stylus. Of course, the tablets would have had to be dried in a kiln. If a wandering mendicant knocked, I would have had a ready excuse: "I'm sorry, I can't come to the door. I've got a book in the oven." We are allowing our capacity for involvement to atrophy. Take eating, for example. We pop a package of frozen hamburger patties in a microwave oven¾ and voilą. Or we don't even do that. We sit down at a table in an eatery and pop edibles into our mouths. I have heard of a woman in Fort Lauderdale who became hooked on "early bird" dinners. Eventually her culinary instinct shriveled up. No longer having any use for her kitchen range, she converted its burners into flower pots. What will she do if they close down the early birds? We are told, "By the sweat of the brow shalt thou eat bread." Amen. Over a dozen summers ago I picked blackberries for three or four gallons of wine, which I made according to a formula in "Stalking the Wild Asparagus," by Euell Gibbons. I don't know whether the finished product was as good as the commercial stuff. I can report, however, that the winter that followed my first foray as winemaker was full of gently giddy intervals before dinner. And I had no compunctions about my bibulousness. Every glass of blackberry wine I drained had a drop of my sweat in it. |