Increase the pressure

 Increase the Pressure is an album by English punk band, Conflict. When I was 15 or 16 years old, I got hold of a copy on cassette, it had been recorded hundreds of times from cassette to cassette, and the sound quality was terrible. But I loved it. In the years that followed, I strived to find it on vinyl (this was before CD) but that album was impossible to find or to get hold of. This was 1988, 1989… there was no internet allowing us to simply jump online and purchase or stream an album. Today, at the age of 52, in 2026, I sit in my home office, working, and I am listening to Increase the Pressure after purchasing it from the iTunes store for $9.99. It still transports me to my youth, it is still an album that I love, and it astonishes me how simple and easy it was to obtain a digital copy. 

                  I am grateful to have grown up in the time before cell phones and mass internet access… at the same time, I am grateful to be young enough to work with and enjoy modern technologies such as the iPhone, Apple TV, MacBooks, high-speed internet connections and a developing Artificial Intelligence. Quantum computing is in its infancy, and I follow with intrigue even though I will probably be too old to benefit from it too much other than from the stocks that I have already purchased. 

                   It is beyond incredible that we can now carry a device in our pocket that is a camera, a phone, a research tool, an instant messaging device, a guide, a store. We are never alone or lost if we have this with us. But I do not regret growing up without such a device. I am grateful that I got to know how difficult it could be to find a friend if you called their house and they had already gone out for the day. I recall the long summer holidays during which I would feel a sense of desolation because I knew that all contact with people from school was severed until school reconvened… but that made the first day back at school a wonderful experience in many ways. 

                  Having said that, I would not choose to go back. I would maintain that, ultimately, one of the lifelong problems I have faced is a human one… the human trait of simply following tradition and never questioning perpetuated norms, whether that be buying a house, getting married, working 40-hour work weeks (which become 80-hour work weeks when people are trying to prove they work hard) and beyond. And, by the way, I have seen many people go to the office five days a week, twelve hours a day, only for a company to ‘let them go.’ Time is wealth. Your time and health are the two most important things that you will ever have. 


Last night at Lake Carolyn, Las Colinas, Dallas, Texas, USA. 

                  

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