Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

I truly think I'm on the cusp of something so innovative, so brilliant that some day, dear reader, you'll be able to say that you read it here first. And like most great ideas, it's really simple. Take the first of the quantum technological leaps that my generation lived through: we went from the inkwell, to the fountain pen (I had a Waterman), to the ball point rolling writer without drawing an anxious breath. (Except for a drawer full of blue/black ink-stained white shirts.)

Then came that flood of innovations that helped shape life as we know it in the Twentieth Century: icebox to refrigerator; radio to television and White Castle to MacDonald's. So what will the Twenty-first Century be known for? Just pick up the nearest telephone, sit back and relax; you're going to find out:

Note that every phone has the same basic keypad, zero to nine plus star and pound; twelve touchtone triggers in all (forgetting about those "bells and whistles," flash, redial and whatever). So with only twelve little buttons American genius put an entire subcontinent to work answering our prompts. That's close to a billion people in India and Bangladesh, my friends. Now think of what could be accomplished if we added just three more buttons to our repertoire: ten, eleven and twelve!

Why I could foresee putting half of China to work, say from Shanghai to the Manchurian border. In the twinkling of an eye, what with three billion Asians gainfully employed, our balance of trade deficit would be cut in half and domestically a new world would dawn for us.

Banks, Motor Vehicle Bureaus, the Post Office and other bureaucracies would have an exponentially better chance of never ever having to hire a human being to speak to anyone. Profits would soar along with tax revenues. In a thrice the government's deficit would be halved and we could, amongst other things, cut classroom size.

Those three new little buttons would be, trust me on this one folks, the light bulb of the New Millennium. And to think, you read it here first.