Gack! Reading about the "good old days" is enough to churn my stomach.

The world has progressed a lot over the past century. Much of the world has figured out that peace brings more prosperity than war; that tolerance and acceptance reduces civil disorder; that educating everyone is a necessity for economic growth; that accessible health care is a necessity for a productive workforce; that innovation improves the quality of life. The list can certainly go on. More importantly, there is a strong case for rewriting the list in terms of compassion. (Alas, we need to progress somewhat further until our governments consider compassion as reason enough.)

Just take a look at something that we all take for granted: literacy. Punch "literacy rates historic" into an image search engine and you'll get graphs of increasing literacy rates from around the globe. Do we really want to return to the good old days when most of the world was illiterate? Do we really want to return to the good old days when a large fraction of the people in our own nations were illiterate? Remember, no literacy means reduced opportunities for education and (in many of our cases) entertainment.