We start bombing in five minutes

I read with a slight smile today about a new app for the iPhone. It is devoted to our late president Ronald Reagan. It is intended to be used as a teaching tool and give lessons on history. It includes quotes and such from his library.

I wonder how many will actually make use of this app? I foresee teachers and American history students looking into it but not as a widespread app. And for a very simple reason.

Most who use this type of device, the world of the all-encompassing app phone, have no knowledge of the environment from our fortieth president's heyday. The world was a very different place. There were two behemoths on the field of battle and everything done by one had a direct correlation to what the other might do. The decades of the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties were a global standoff between the US and USSR. Every move was calculated. Such a world no longer exists.

I recently began re-reading 'Red Storm Rising'. It is Tom Clancy's second book and involves a potential WWIII. It begins with a plot by Muslims against the Soviets drawing them into a desperate state plot. Fittingly it seems this has been a prelude to today's world of global strife. The book is very well written and takes me back to a time when the newspapers were a daily notebook of world events involving the Americans versus the Soviets. The world has certainly changed dramatically since then. I chuckle at the references to a 'telex', something not in existence today that was high-tech back in the day. Even the most sophisticated electronics available to the public back then pale in comparison to what is available on the market today.

I am sceptical that this app will ever get much use as it has no basis for today's social butterflies. However, I am most sure The Great Communicator would be proud.