Cardboard.

I'm on a semi-permanent search for the inventions that have changed the way mankind lives because I have a hypothesis that, well, there aren't any.

But. I was just in the garage breaking down our inordinately large stock of boxes. Big boxes, little boxes, boxes of great strength and large crunch-test numbers, wine boxes, and so on.

And I realized that cardboard is maybe one of the least appreciated inventions. It is one of the most ubiquitous (how that word is overused in computing circles!) and adaptable substances ever.

Everything comes in cardboard, or its wealker brother, paperboard. Our shoes: cardboard. Our backpacks: cardboard. Our luggage: cardboard. I once even built myself a cardboard house for shelter from a storm, but that's a different story.

And then, this morning, I got to thinking about cardboard. It's kindof like our society. You know, tacky. You wouldn't use cardboard if you wanted to look nice. It's ultimately weak. Yeah, it might get your record collection from here to Omaha via UPS, but you're not going to WANT to build a house of it (trust me, I KNOW). It's not a "survival tool" that any sane person would consider using in an emergency. I don't have any in my car. It wouldn't go in my patented Bachelor Survival Kit (tm), whereas something like Duct tape would (and is).

Yup. It's a great image of our society. Cardboard. Tacky, weak. Non-surviving. Ubiquitous. That's my cranky Sunday morning thought.