The progress of life

Today I saw a demolition crew busy tearing down yet another old, shabby house in our suburb. The lure of development dollars far outweighting any thoughts of renovating the pre-loved home. As I took a reflecting look at the now flattened allotment I struggled to even picture the house that yesterday, and for decades before it stood on that dirt.

They say Video killed the Radio star, but technology has swung quite a wrecking ball over the decades. If we had a garage sale of our long forgotten items I suspect we'd uncover a box full of pristine carbon copy paper, a VHS rewind machine so often used at Video Ezy many years ago, a pile empty photo albums, a box of chalk, flourest light bulbs, a manual credit card processing machine, a T square and probably some graph paper.

The weekend papers highlighted a story about the worlds oldest mechanical clock being wound by hand for the final time. Our garage sale is full of items that were important in our lives at some point in time, how long will it be before we will add the letterbox, the desktop computer and the palm pilot to our dust covered heap.

We could assume that the makers of the T-square suffered terrible financial losses but more likely, and hopefully they evolved and  moved into computer aided design software. The VHS rewind machine company may have morphed into DVD scratch repairers and the carbon copy paper producers no doubt extended their line into laser printer friendly paper.

So rather than mourn the demolition of the post war style house instead I will enjoy the architecture, street appeal and the history of the remaining homes. I'll watch with interest and reflection as the suburb is transformed for better or worse, by the progress of life.