In a university town like Ann Arbor, Michigan, every available table has a laptop on it, just as every other hand holds a cell phone pressed to an ear. Whatever did we do before the electronic age? Did we actually go to the library instead of Googling? Were there actually such things as phone booths? Speaking of which, did you ever wonder where Clark Kent would change into his Superman outfit in today's world? Just as I remember the day our first TV was delivered to the house in 1947, I guess it would be Isabella and Muha's parents' generation that would remember the first computer they ever saw. Electronic technology is moving forward so rapidly that it's hard to imagine what we'll be seeing within the next month, much less the next year. And yet we don't seem able to eradicate poverty or come up with nonviolent ways to settle disputes between countries. Children die of starvation every second of every day, and elders die even here in the most affluent country in the world simply because they can't afford the medicines they need to keep them alive. If we put the brainpower, money and energy into dealing with these life-and-death human issues instead of working to come up with a cell phone that will make coffee and walk our dog, where would we be as a world community? Ah, but we'd have to change our definition of "profit," wouldn't we? Our bottom line would have to be people not money. I wonder what it would take for that shift to become a reality? Maybe a first step would be for us to stop buying ever-more sophisticated electronic toys. If there were no demand, I bet the manufacturers would think twice before making and marketing them. As with the long struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, a coordinated global economic boycott was what finally did the deed.