Zainab Bangura
Courtney Harned
English 101
15 April 2013 The “Old Father Time Becomes a Terror” In this essay “Old Father Time Becomes a Terror,” Richard Tomkins, the author, talks about the way technology has giving us leisure time instead of made things easier for us. I absolutely disagree with the author because I’m living in a world filled with different types of technology that have helped me out greatly. Technology today has affected us in different ways, but I consider them good. Whether its transportation, appliance/home technology, or communication technology, they played a big role in me and my family member’s life. One of Tomkins topic was on the way vehicles today hasn’t fulfilled what they have promise. “The motor car, for example, promised unimaginable levels of personal mobility. But now, traffic in cities moves more slowly than it did in the days of the horse-drawn carriage, and we waste our lives immobilized by congestion” (Tomkins 545). Although it was a promise to have “unimaginable levels of personal mobility” (545) and yes, traffic now a days moves more slow. But when you think back, people use to have to travel long distance back in the days with horses, just like how we travel long distances with our cars. The only difference is with a horse, if it was to get tired, you would have to swap over so it can rest. Also, cars are capable of holding more people and luggage than a horse would, and instead of going 20mph you can go 80mph. Other transportations we have to get to places are metro buses, trains, and taxi cabs, airplanes, and etc. Transportation today is very easy to have and get to because there are so many options for you to choose from. Furthermore, Tomkins also elaborates on how appliances like the washer and drying machines affect us of time stress. “In the home, washing machine promised to free woman from the drudgery of the laundry. In reality, they encourage us to change our clothes daily instead of weekly, creating seven times as much washing and ironing” (Tomkins 545). I’m personally very thankful for washers and drying machines because my parents are from Sierra Leone and my mother always tells me how everything down here in America is made easy for me to do. She explains to me how in her early childhood days her mother would tell her to wash everyone’s clothes in the house. Nothing upset her more than the fact that she had to walk miles just to go get buckets of water, then walk all the way back to where she stayed at and wash all the bundles of clothes with her bare hands. And till this day, that is what people still do back home in Africa. This is the reason why appliances are needed. We having to change our clothes daily shouldn’t be an excuse or a problem. Let’s be grateful that we have a machine that can do the hard work for us, all we got to do is take our clothes put it in the machine with some laundry soap and the work gets done. In
