Americans in the world of 2012 are inundated by smartphones, computer screens, thumb drives and Wi-Fi, and this might be a good time to look back and reflect on just how far we have come as a nation — as a culture.

Do you think George Washington, as he surveyed his cold and starving army as it was ferried boat by boat across the Delaware River toward Trenton and immortality, could ever have conceived I would be writing about his exploits in a newspaper column, then invisibly transmitting these words from my home through the air to a computer terminal in the News & Eagle newsroom?

Not unless he was Ray Bradbury or Rod Serling.

I’m always somewhat amused at just how impatient our society has become as we wend our way through the troubles of the world, out of a major economic recession and into the always unknown we call the future.

So, humor me a bit as you read on.

On April 18, 1775, as this nation embarked on its democratic and revolutionary course from that day to this, information and its historical context began to change.

That date began the midnight ride of Paul Revere, who foretold citizens “the British were coming.”

Events soon unfolded on both Lexington Common and Concord Green, and the information age of America was born.

Back then, news and information were no less important than they are today.

It just took a whole lot longer to make its way around the 13 colonies.

Think about this — people along Paul Revere’s route from Boston to Lexington, Mass., didn’t have a TV tuned to CNN for the latest on the movement of British troops in New England.

They didn’t have a Fox News reporter getting instant reaction from farmers along the route as to what this means for Colonial Americans.

Information literally was spread by word of mouth, spread by horse or carriage, by newspaper, mail or happenstance.

The spread of information occurred at a pace that would flabbergast today’s technological nanosecond world.

I get irritated when my computer takes more than a few seconds to respond to a command. Our forefathers were lucky if they found out what happened in the next town within a week.

We have progressed, as a technological society, to the point information is instant, and we grow exasperated when it’s not at our very fingertips to decipher.

The downside of this instant-information world in which we live — we now have an accompanying instant expectation something will be done to change whatever it is that needs to be changed.

On Oct. 29, 1929, when the economic crash began on Black Tuesday and propelled the United States and the world into what we know call the Great Depression, people had little expectation during that era things were going to change for the better anytime soon.

It’s not that they didn’t want it to change quickly. That generation was far, far more patient in returning to economic prosperity.

The Depression generation became extraordinarily thrifty — they found ways to cope with less money, less prosperity and less of everything.

Today, we have none of the patience of our parents, our grandparents or even our great-great-great-great-grandparents, and on and on.

It’s been burned out of us by technology. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. I accept change. I don’t always like it, but it’s inevitable, so why fight the tide of history?

Now, getting back to the point.

The Great Depression, which hit America as hard as any country on the planet, saw unemployment reach 25 percent of the population. Americans in 1933 would have danced in the streets for today’s figure of 8.3 percent unemployment.

In the 1930s, people lost their homes, their farms and businesses were shuttered. Americans starved.

Most historians agree the U.S did not fully come out of the Great Depression until the closing two years of World War II — a span of about 14 years.

That great economic disaster didn’t end until massive government reforms were put in place, it didn’t end until the world was thrown into the bloodiest war in earth’s history, it didn’t end until upward of 200 million people died as a result of the conflict and wartime industry boomed.

Today, as we begin to emerge from the Great Recession, we seem to have lost the patience of our forefathers.

We have come, in our techno society, to expect things to change for the better just as quickly as our computer screens flash information to us in the blink of an eye.

Unfortunately, economic forces always move at their own pace. Maybe it’s time to step back in time a bit, and rediscover the patience of our forefathers — historically speaking.



Christy is news editor at the Enid News & Eagle and may be reached at davidc@enidnews.com.