Getting Wired About Those Wires
Commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney:
Inventors are inventing new things before most of us learn how to use the last thing they invented.
This year, they're making computers 10 times faster than last year's.
They're producing digital television sets before some of us have learned how to work everything on the set we have now.
When are the inventors going to get practical and do something about the tangle of wires we all have running these devices they invented?
Take this mess around my desk. Look behind the television set in your living room, under the bed, behind the refrigerator. Chances are, it's a rat's nest of electrical cords.
Those cables over my head here are for the lights when I do something on camera like this in my office.
Here, let me show you something over here. These are all cords for pieces of equipment I bought in the last 10 years.
Look at this — all different. Nothing works with anything else. Look at the endings on them, no two the same.
I don't even know what most of them are for anymore. I don't dare throw them away because I might need them.
I mean, if Thomas Edison was so smart, how come he didn't make one cord that fits everything?
Inventors have come up with more ways to turn lights on and off than we need.
Take a fairly typical New York apartment. You walk in, flip a switch in the hall and a light comes on.
Do you do the same thing to get the kitchen light? You do not. And for light to read by sitting on the couch in the living room, you turn a little paddle switch.
For the lamp over here, the switch is not on the lamp at all, it's on the cord, which usually falls behind the table.
In the bedroom, you don't turn a switch on or press anything. You turn this knurled knob.
You push a little knob that goes in and out to get light out of one light, and for another, you pull a chain.
We all dislike uniformity but there are times when sameness pays off. For instance, we all agree to drive on the same side of the road. It's safer that way. We ought to get together so we have one wire for everything and one way to start and stop the power from flowing through it.
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