There were no cars, no electricity, no TV, no computers, no refrigerators, no central heating, no A/C. People like my parents were growing their own food, sewing their own clothes, and chopping a lot of wood. It was not the paradise that people imagine, or that some recall. Memory is selective.

I dont think John is saying the past was better, I interpret his post as a refusal to get on the digital hamster wheel where we are promised things will "faster and better." OTOH you seem to imply that growing your own food or cutting some wood is "bad." I dont know about cutting wood since I never had to do it, but I do grow my own fruit and vegetables in my back yard. There is nothing more satisfying than eating fruit ripened on a tree, you would not believe the difference, but it takes effort and care. Yes you might go to the supermarket and spend a lot of time choosing your fruit, but it is not the same.

I think John is fed up with the half promise digital delivers. Yes, we are told we can get a digital radio with satellite capability and listen to 10000000 channels, but we are not told we need an electrical engineering degree to set it up, that we will need to make 3 trips to the store to weed out the non functioning ones and then once we have one that works, it might not last longer than the vegetables in the refrigerator. While "more simple" is not always "more better", neither is more complicated. Specially when one takes into account the planned obsolecense, yes your digital camera might not be obsolete in 3 or 4 years, but will it be compatible with the next generation computer? It is like buying a car and the salesman telling you: " you will need to change the tires in this car every 6 months because the ones you have now wont be compatible with the new roads."

Digital is not bad, but then it is not the panacea we have been told it is either.