Sunday, January 08, 2006

TECHNO-LOGIC-KILL: a missive against mass technics



The ever expanding social aprication of mass technics has had profound influence in the way society has changed over time. In fact, it could be argued that it is the major factor in how the social landscape changes. In the real world, or the natural world, time is not linear, but moves in cycles. Dawn brings day turns to duskand brings night, and repeat. This was a defining part of what shaped how we lived and saw the world. With the introduction of electric light, this changed dramatically. This prosses, whose logical conclusion is efficively to abolish the night, to abolish darkness, changed our sleep patterns, the role of the night in our way of interacting with the world, and it expanded the relm of control by the State. Every night we go to sleep, and wake up anywhere from 4~8 hours latter. We are accustomed to this. But the difference lies in that we go to sleep is totally disconnected from the natural cycles of day/night because the electric light has artificially extended the day for as long as it is on. Before the mass imposition of electricity in Europe and the United States (I've only read about these place in reguards to this issue), peaples sleep patterns were radically, different. There was two seperate 'sleeps', one starting shortly after sundown and ending shortly before midnight, and another a few hours latter until sunup. It only took a few years after mass electrification for this to be dramaticall altered. Prior to this it was common there to record ones dreams and reflect, and have time for relaxation inbetween sleeps, then, gone. Slowly but surely, we are ripped from the natural world and shuved into this atrificial world we have created. And I ask, how could we create such a world so alien to our needs?
With each new technological advance, another skill is lost, another thing that we were able to do for ourselves is forgotten as one stops doing it regularly, then they don't teach it to their children and another generation knows how to do one less thing. Another factory is built, another commercial made to sell the latest automation upgrade, another life spent in misery working to death to make the newest automation. The slow prosses towards the total biological atrophy of humans continues until our extiction as capable biological animals. Whose in control; the cripples, or the weelchairs and everything that is required to make them? We find ourselves in an enviornment alien to human needs, seemingly not needing us. Wake up in the apartment, a small white box entirely simmilar to the others in the building, itself a giant box. Don't need to use the stairs, so down the elevator, standing together with complete strangers, an akward silence. Out the door and into the street. A flood of strangers in uniforms flow past, your presence doesn't affect them. Wait, stop! a flashing electric light orders. Cars wizz down the street. Must stay on the sidewalk, in the street lies the real threat of death, the streets is allways saying. And on your other side, lights, messeges, screaming "look!" "new stuff!" "more", "look!!". Just gotta keep walking. Need to catch the train, can't walk there, or don't want to? No time anyways. wait! the train leaves without you, wouldn't wait for you anyways. It doesn't care, doesn't even know you, it can't because it's one of the new ones thats automated no people, just machines. Every day, same thing. Day in, day out. A life sacrificed on the alter of technological civilization. but not released to death, condemed to an existance not living but alive; undead. Where are you walking to anyways? extinction.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, that explains this habit i have of waking in the middle of the night and making love my lover then going back to sleep...

;) guess who?

12:03 PM  

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