This appears to be the second post this week where I have lamented feeling like an old fogey. I must be really feeling my age this week.

I have been in the business world about 20 years. During that time, I have seen huge change in the speed of doing business, always technology-driven. 20 years ago, it was standard in our industry for orders to not ship for a couple of weeks. Today, most orders ship within a couple of days. We relied on mail for a lot of communication so that naturally made things run at a slower pace than they do in todays' world. Fed Ex was just getting started back then and you used them when it absolutely positively had to be there overnight ... and only then because you paid dearly for it. But everything was just at a much slower pace. We didn't get a fax machine until 1989 I believe and we seemed to be on the cutting edge at that. Our first PC was in about 90 or 91. Prior to that, we had used memory typewriters which were incredible for productivity but they didn't really push the speed of doing business ahead the way that fax machines, PCs, and then EDI communications did.

All of a sudden the race was on -- how could we (the business world) possibly get more done better, faster, and cheaper. It used to be said that out of three things -- quality, speed, and price -- you could have two but not all three. In the last 20 years though, providing all three has become the norm and the expectation.

As you can probably sense, I am not sure this is all good because what happens is that, like it or not, quality does suffer. People can no longer keep up with the machines and everyone ends up pressed to their limits.

I am sure that ultimately these are just growing pains and eventually there will be a bit of a leveling out but, in today's business world, the pressures put on us by productivity demands can be very frustrating. And we wonder why we don't have time for exercise and recreation and why high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety and depression are all on a spiraling climb.

However ... it is exciting when you see technology doing amazing things. Helping us with advances in fighting diseases is just one thing. Another thing, though, can be Kingdom-building. Through analysis and review, I think we are learning and doing things which help reach more people for Christ. Our church has recently been considering a visioning process called Natural Church Development which exists because technology has allowed the surveying and results compilation of hundreds of churches all over the world, providing a base line against which other churches can measure their success in critical areas. That is a good thing.

So, I guess I am an old fogey. I learned how to program in BASIC 25 years ago and I thought that was pretty neat. I swore I'd always stay on top of current technoloy, at least to the best of my ability. But it passed me by many years ago. I guess I am okay with that. Leave it up to the young whipper snappers and the IT folks. As long as there are some positive outcomes.