Except the fact that if I ever become a father of children, I will be so very glad that such a thing happens over a procession of years, and that I won’t get, say, five of them all at once. Because that’s just too much, alright? And frankly, my life wasn’t made to be the plot of a sitcom.

I read a piece of literature the other day about how people need to stop and evaluate what the real effect of technology on their lives is: what will be the societal effects of the utter proliferation of computers and chips into every facet of life?

In fact, I’ve even heard of people talking about computer dust now: microcomputers that can be sewn into clothes, or painted onto walls; the dust is self-networking, and when together en masse formes its own operating system and does whatever you need it to do. The profound effect of having computer power everywhere is something we can’t even begin to comprehend: and by the time we actually do, we’ll have passed it by as a society and be on to something bigger and better. Or, as it seems we’re going, smaller and better.

Speaking of smaller, I’m embarking on a rather unusual mission: to live like the Japanese. Considering how most of Tokyo’s real estate is worth incredible sums of money, the people who live in, say, the technological district are forced to live in spaces that are so small they almost defy my western-born imagination, and the pure art of miniaturization in such cramped quarters is something I would love to aquire. Certainly, I have too much stuff.

But the stuff that I do need to be where it is, that stuff can be fit into more efficient spaces than it is. For instance, my desk is obscene it its proportions, and that’s not even mentioning the CRT monitor and television that I have sitting almost right next to eachother. I’d love, for instance, to have a small, simple desk that could hold a 15″ flatscreen monitor (remind me why I need a 19″ CRT?) on which — should I buy a new graphics card — I could both watch what little television I watch and do my computer things.

My bookcases are another space waster: the books they contain only actually occupy about 60% of the shelf space. The rest is taken up by empty shelving. It seems as if somehow I should be able to buy or make my own bookshelves where the books come to the edge of the shelf. Of course, I’d have to bold them to the wall and everything, but that’s a small inconvenience.

What in the world was my landlady thinking when she installed a wetbar down here? Obviously the basement was intended for tenants, not just for a party room and pool table, so why the bar? Is anyone living in a bachelor pad actually going to care about whether or not there’s a bar? The answer: not many. In fact, the thing is a big (ugly!) waste of space, and it needs to go. But she’s not going to let me do that.

Western colture is a strange creature now that I think about it; Japanese ideals are very much informed by their religion, and also by the fact that their island is only so big. Ours is informed by our materialistic non-religious society, but again by the fact that there is just so much land we don’t really know what to do with it. Frankly, if I were in any position of power over such things, I’d pretty much put a stop on development: less urban sprawl, less suburbia; please, less suburbia.

Along that note, this culture simply doesn’t realize that we need nature. We need the wide open spaces, and we need them close by. How cool would it be to have a city that just ends in farmland? One moment city, the next moment, fields, forests. A pipe dream, you say? Well, if the Japanese culture is informed and influenced by the size of their island, why can’t ours be informed and influenced by the artificial limitations we place on ourselves? Face it, half the people living in those huge houses built smack next to eachother in horribly ugly subdivisions that go up ever year don’t need that size of house except as a status symbol; I would wager that most of them never really use 90% of the floorspace they actually had.

Imagine the priorities we as a society would have to re-evaluate, living more closely together: a sense of family, a sense of peacemaking, a sense of community. The myth of our corporate psyche is that a city is neccesarily crime-ridden and dangerous. it is, however, cheaper to police a city than it is to police large areas of twisting streets and cookie-cutter houses. Why not densify? It’s better for the economy, it forces people to re-evaluate the way they are living, and it certainly helps technology develop as people begin to seek technological solutions to space problems and the like.

However, some suburbanites’ view of the city as a place of high crime and ghettos is probably true to a point; but the ghettos we’ve developed in Canada are mostly a result of poor urban planning and also of fundimentally flawed “social programs” that basically pay people to remain poor. It’s a tragedy, really. There doesn’t have to be a part of the city that people instinctively steer clear of; in fact, the entire city can be safe, with forward-thinking social policy that doesn’t involve bleeding heart liberal chowderheads who throw money at people, as if money every made anyone’s problems go away.

And that’s about all I have to say about that: take it or leave it, this is only one man’s opinion. Maybe it doesn’t matter much to you. Maybe it strikes a chord. Tell me about it in the comment area below.

Also, to the person I called a chowderhead somewhere down there, if you’re someone I know, sorry for calling you a chowderhead. Sign your name next time, thanks.

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