Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I'm watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still", circa 1951 with Michael Rennie. More accurately I'm out having a nice big latte while TiVo-ing the movie, though I did catch the first half hour.

Now I'm not that old - I was born in the sixties. But life was pretty much the same. No cell phones. If you wanted to get hold of someone and they weren't near a phone that was too bad. No voice mail either. You just called them later. And if it was important you just kept trying until you got hold of them. Efficient global communication consisted of sending a telegram. No internet then.

Klaatu, Michael Rennie's character, has come to Earth to tell the people or the world that if they cause danger to other folks in the universe the planet will have to be destroyed. Predictably the political leaders can't put aside their bickering to listen, so it falls to the scientists to do so. Fifty years later and we really haven't improved one bit with our communication, but we can really cause some excellent destruction now.

In the movie it's safe enough at night for Bobby, roughly 12 years old, to wander out at night. I used to be able to stay out pretty late safely when I was a kid too. But a couple of nights ago a teenager was swarmed and robbed in Waterloo not all that far from where I live, and a couple years ago a little girl was taken off the street a couple of blocks from my house. I'd think twice about wandering around town late at night myself.

Life seemed so much simpler then. People knew how to relax. They didn't spend their lives with cell phones to their ears, or constantly checking their BlackBerrys. Of course I am sitting here typing this so I guess I have my own particular indulgences. But then again, I had breakfast at the farmer's market with my wife and youngest son, took my oldest son out for lunch, and then spread a couple of cubic yards of mulch in the gardens. So an hour on the internet won't kill me.

We've made some good progress and some bad progress. We can communicate and share ideas more efficiently than ever before, though I'd would suggest that maybe we are a bit too connected sometimes. On the other hand we really haven't advanced the concept of peace very much, and we can now kill each other in ever more spectacular ways. And we are seeing incredibly senseless crime. Apart from things like swarmings, I've seen more than one occurrence of people toppling gravestones. I could never have imagined such as thing happening.

Just once in a while it might be nice to visit 1951, even ever so briefly, just to see if it really is better today. Fortunately we are still concentrating on wars on our own planet, as opposed to in space, so at least we don't have to worry about a visit from Klaatu anytime soon.