uh-huh...

Soon the government check won't be in the mail - Yahoo! News:

New recipients of benefits will have to accept paperless payments starting on May 1 of next year, three months later than first proposed.

Those already on Social Security will have until March 1, 2013 to make the switch to direct deposits or a debit card.

More than 58 million retirees, disabled people and surviving family members receive Social Security or Supplemental Security benefits. Already eight out of 10 people getting federal benefits receive those payments electronically, officials say.

I'll believe they're serious about this deadline just like they were serious ("no we really, really mean it this time") about the conversion to digital broadcasting...

on "progress", like it or not...

Ron Burk: Let Mozart Be Dead Already:

As technology accelerates, the conservative desire for "simpler times" is made both more acute and more contradictory. For people are rarely willing to give up anything to get back to simpler times -- they only want undesirable things taken away. Note that at its peak, conservatism in America did absolutely nothing to swell the ranks of the Amish. The folks most deeply concerned about retaining "traditional" gun rights are still pretty much eating corn-fed meat that was killed in a pen with a steel slug coming out of a compressed air hose, friendo.

Here, then, is my common ground with Neil Postman. For he was clear that technology always gets used, and it always brings both advantages and drawbacks. His call was for a discussion on how to minimize those drawbacks before a new technology (like electronic voting machines) takes over and has its way. Unfortunately, such a discussion is virtually impossible. America has a highly optimized machine for taking any national topic of discussion and turning it immediately into a red-vs.-blue search for advantage or slander. There just ain't nearly enough of us watching C-SPAN, I'm afraid, instead of the daily news frenzy shows.