The Maverick Bluestocking Can’t Explain

I looked at technology when I was considering wireless devices. I’d like to think a bit more about some of that clever stuff.

There’s a lot around us that we can’t see, even though we know it’s there. Radio waves have been used for a long time and we are used to them. As a child I was the proud owner of a small red transistor radio on which I could listen to Radio Caroline, through the hisses and crackles. And there are x-rays and electricity. We can’t see them and most of us don’t understand them but we depend on them, often for our lives. Right now, I am using the WiFi in my house. I know I pay for it and I know it connects me (wirelessly) but I have absolutely no idea how it works.

All of those things are a big mystery to me, and I’m happy with that. I can’t understand any of them and I’m not really that keen to learn. I certainly can’t explain how any of them work. But not understanding them doesn’t mean I don’t believe that they exist, that they work, and that I can depend on them.

What’s more, a couple of hundred years ago people would have said that all of these technologies were impossible fantasies, along with flying in the sky, travelling to the moon and talking on the telephone.

There are other clever things that seem to exist but that I can’t understand. Some of them can be understood by very few people or perhaps even by none at all. Intuition, imagination, telepathy, divination, life, creation. But just because they can’t be explained well enough for us to understand how they work, does that mean they don’t exist?

I’m not suggesting that we should accept or believe everything that can’t be explained. But since we can’t really, really say exactly why we are here, for sure, then perhaps it’s a good idea to keep our minds ajar, to be open to possibilities even if they seem improbable? For something to exist and to work, does it have to be simple enough to be understood by the human mind?