Don't forget to turn off the cat

There is a fundamental change happening in how we interact with the manmade objects in our lives.

In the past, all things electric had On/Off switches. We knew that in order to use a thing, you first turned it on, when you were finished, you turned it off. Life was simple.

Look around you, do you turn off your cell phone? How about your Laptop?  Do you have a DVR or cable box? How about a video game console? Do you know where the power button is on any of these?  If you have Wi-Fi at home it's never off. I have a Roomba that really can't be turned off short of removing the battery or letting it run down. Many new devices can only be turned off by removing it's power source.

 Your pets don't turn off, you can call your dog anytime, why not Siri, or Google? The cat goes into sleep mode, but is never completely off. Millennials just expect everything to be available anytime, the concept of things being off is a foreign thing to them.

There was a time when you would watch a TV show or movie where some invention would go wrong. The characters would run around shouting 'Turn it off! Turn it OFF!'.  I am sure that many millennials do not have a clue what this means, much less how to do it.

Why has this happened? Convenience of course. We are an impatient society, we can not be bothered to wait a few seconds for a device to turn on. 

Convenience costs money, in the form of power. We use many devices for an hour or two a day, yet they stay on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year long. That power costs natural resources.

Society favors environmental responsibility and we like to think we are responsible citizens. But we never give a thought to all the little convenient things around us, using power all the time.

So do yourself, and the planet a favor, turn off the cat when you are done.