A Rapidly Changing World

En Route ICW
27 43.72 NB 080 23.73 W

1. I tried to give away a HP printer/scanner/copier that we had on board. We've had it for 7 years but the last time we used it was 1-2 years ago. It takes more room than it's worth. Surprise, I couldn't give it away. Nobody in our family wants it. Nobody around the marina wanted a free printer. I had to leave it on the heap of FREE stuff.
   
   
2. I left two big bags full of books at the cruiser's book exchange. One title, "In the Plex" was a very recent one about Google. I thought my friend Steve would like that. Steve turned it down flat because it was printed on paper. He said, "I only read electronic books now."
   
   
3. In Sweden, libraries are rapidly closing their doors because the citizenry prefers to read books electronically. I expected the eventual demise of books on paper, but not so rapidly.
   
   
4. Also from Sweden, the national phone company is abandoning land-line telephone service because almost everyone has cell phones. They are scrambling to take down telephone wires and in some cases the poles too because they cost money to maintain. The few people who still rely on land lines were told to switch. For the tiny minority that live out of range of cell phone signals, they are told, "tough.
   
   Lest you think it is only Sweden,  read on.  It is about to happen in the USA too according to the Reuters report here.  It said, "AT&T and Verizon, the dominant telephone companies, want to end their 99-year-old universal service obligation known as "provider of last resort."They say universal land line service is a costly and unfair anachronism that is no longer justified because of a competitive market for voice services."
   
   
5. Yet another from Sweden. The famed cradle-to-grave universal health care system in Sweden is crumbling. The reason seems to be greed. Health care workers in Sweden had to be government employees earning a public servant's wages. The doctors saw how much doctors here in the USA earn and many of them decided to bail out. They are leaving the country or they are starting private practices in Sweden that compete with the free government health care system. Government hospitals there are closing their doors for lack of patients. The quality of public care has become so poor that many Swedes are willing to pay out of pocket for private care. Budgets are so cramped that even in Stockholm, the capital city with 2 million people, they can only afford two ambulances and crews some times during the week.
   
   
6. My cell phone just got a call from a political pollster for the first time ever. I thought that was illegal.

All during my engineering career, I thrived on change.  Indeed, I was always an agent of change.  It set me apart from other engineers and it made me valuable.  Now after retirement,  I think we are happier on the boat.  I believe that cruiser's lives change less rapidly than the average.  At this stage in life, that suits us fine.