• Since 2007 cases of hemorrhoids have gone up 23%
• Since 1998 workplace productivity has dropped 37%
• Magazine Subscriptions have declined 45% over the past decade
• 73% of all newspaper related jobs have been terminated since 1998

These may or may not be actual figures that I found on the internet, but the rise of technology has brought about a dramatic change in how our society functions.

Some of you may not be able to remember this, but there was a time when you would go to someone’s house and when you had to take care of your business you would find a number of magazines conveniently located near the toilet.  Popular Mechanics, Field and Stream, and Reader’s Digest seemed to be the most popular of poop time passing magazines. (I hope all of those publications are now out of business)  When someone says the Reader’s Digest version of the story, instead of the short version of the story they should actually mean the boring version that sucks ass. Regardless, when you had to take a dump at someone else’s home you were handcuffed by their interest in reading material if you wanted to read on the crapper (John C. Crapper invented the flush toilet).  Now we have the completely amazing smart phone at our fingertips and as long as you have internet access you are no longer hamstrung by another person’s reading taste when going big ock (that’s what my grandma Jansma referred to it as)  I can’t tell you how many times I have taken care of business  in more ways than one when I am sitting on the John.  Also, what’s the protocol here?  Is it socially acceptable to talk on the phone while you are dropping a deuce?  I can’t tell you how many times I have been held captive in the bathroom stall because I don’t want the person I am speaking with to hear the toilet flush.

Beyond the advent of the Smart Phone, spell check is another concept that has revolutionized how we function on a daily basis. I am  a terrible speller but it doesn’t really matter all that much because I now have spell check as a crutch to help me get by and compensate for the fact that I still struggle with the word restaurant after having typed it over one hundred times.  What tells me I am a truly awful speller is the fact that I routinely run into situations where spell check can’t even give me a plausible suggestion for the word I want to type because I am completely butchering it.  “Effing spell check you suck why can’t you figure out what word I am trying to type you pile of shit!”  These are the moments when I am most ashamed of myself and feel like a complete ignoramus (spell check came up with that one).  My hope is that as we continue to lean on spell check and  people will be such horrible spellers that they will do away with the National Spelling Bee.  Is there a kid who makes the finals of that competition that doesn’t eat their own boogers and get beat up on at least a weekly basis?  The kids in that competition really shouldn’t be receiving praise and awards, they should be constantly ridiculed and hidden from plain sight.  The sad thing is, we may reach a point where the only people who are proficient at spelling are the amish.

While I have pointed out a couple of ways technology can be of a benefit, at least I think that is the point I’m making with spell check, I think we are at a point where technology could reduce the occurrence of terrorist acts if not completely eradicate terrorism.  My suggestion is that we gather up all the high def ginormous tv’s we can and couple them with PS4 or XBOX.  Send them to all the countries where the terrorists hang out and it will help them to overcome their constant desire to destroy the United States.  Pretty much every place where there are terrorist cells is some god forsaken area where there isn’t shit to do.  You get them a satellite dish, high def tv, and video game console and you have just improved their life 1000%.  Now instead of stewing over how awful Americans are and how they all should be wiped off the face of the earth, they are happily playing HALO on line with Chuck from Des Moines and finding out these Americans aren’t really that bad after all.

This concept could also be extended to solve the need to build a fence around our entire country.  Just send all of our non 4k tv’s to Mexico.  It’s pretty obvious  4k television is on it’s way in and that there will be enough content available in the next couple of years that actually owning one will make complete sense.  At that point, non 4k televisions will be obsolete, well not obsolete, but who is going to want to watch traditional high def tv?  Nobody I know of will.  It will be similar to when you happen across someone who doesn’t have a high def television. (These people do actually exist they are typically either Dutch or over the age 0f 90 or both)  I ask myself how in the hell did I ever watch television back then, this is worse than no tv at all!  So, when the content for 4k reaches a reasonable level there will be millions of unwanted high def televisions that can be donated to Mexico.  Once the citizens of Mexico have high def tv their life will be so much better that they will realize when you couple it with their amazing weather there is really no reason to migrate to the U.S.  Not sure how we keep people in Canada, I don’t think Canadian bacon and Tim Horton’s is enough  (I am hoping they realize they want nothing to do with Obama Care).  I’m quite certain if one of our presidential candidates for 2016 gets ahold of this it will provide the momentum they need to put them over the top.  If you hear any of the presidential candidates chatting about this they likely heard it here first.