Slave to Technology
We’ve come a long way from our deliverance from the washtub and board, to the washing machine with it hand-crank wringer, to the automatic washer and dryer. Now, all we have to worry about is upgrading to the most water- and energy-efficient, front-loading … oh, and colorful and sleek and LCD-screened, and perched atop a handy storage drawer-ed … models. All three most familiar brands of which (Maytag, Kenmore, and Whirlpool) are all actually made by Whirlpool. Only LG is a separate company. But sure as Bank of America has bought MBNA, LG will be subsumed by its industry’s lava flow of acquisition. But what do we care, as long as our lives are made easier and we have more time for greater productivity and recreation of higher orders?Technology has also delivered us from the horse and carriage to horsepower and highways. We have been freed from the manual shift to the automatic, from analog AM radio to digital AM/FM and satellite radio, with random-play multi-disc CD systems. We no longer have to worry about who might rustle our horses, and what might spook the horse into throwing us as we ride. Automotive security systems first tell passersby to step away from the car and then Lojack their whereabouts to the police after the Grand Theft Auto wiseguy outsmarts the alarm. In the “protect us from ourselves” department, our cars have gone from the annoying clang to the gentle tone to the dulcet voice warning us that a seatbelt is unfastened or a door ajar.
Now, Lexus can parallel park itself – a chore I was ready to be freed from, say, 40 years ago. Now that I've finally mastered that skill, what I need is for the car to unload the groceries from the trunk and shlep them to the kitchen. But I guess life-long suburbanites who have never parked anywhere but mall lots will need this service when they regentrify hip new urban environments (to walk to theaters, shopping and restaurants, as the ads bray) after their offspring leave the nest. I wonder what the gentle auto-voice will tell the driver when the car won’t fit into the chosen spot. For men: “Sorry, you’re just too big to fit. Let’s go find something that can take all of you.” For women: “Honey, you know you deserve more space than this puny little thing.” Now, there’s a technology that we could become slaves to. And you know the auto industry marketing gurus will give us whatever will appeal to our deepest psychological needs (or fantasies), the ones we don’t admit into our conscious awareness. The gentle voice will not say, "Dummy! Get a Prius or a MiniCooper for in-town. And save some resources by driving it everywhere else, too."
But we don’t mind. As long as our lives are easier and we feel better about ourselves, we don’t mind having fewer real choices. Choices take so much time, make us think so hard. So we pay a bit more because there’s less competition among manufacturers. Among banks. Hey, efficiencies of scale make things both better and cheaper for us, right? Everybody says so. Yeah, and more than 60% of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was allied with Osama bin Laden around the time we invaded Iraq.
I’m not some Luddite who wants to reject technological conveniences. I just want to keep the context in mind. What do the providers of those conveniences know about us that lead them to offer particular subtleties instead of others? What needs (or fantasies) for prestige and self-esteem are they counting on – and addicting us to their brand of satisfaction thereof? And what more do they hope to profit from them?
It’s one thing to want more freedom from drudgery in order to apply our talents and intellect to higher order goals. But it’s a different, and a much worse, thing to let ourselves be turned into whatever consumer creatures the marketers work so hard to carve us into. We don’t know their full agendas, we can only be sure those agendas extend beyond the juicy tidbit on the hook dangling in front of us at the moment.
The only agendas, goals and missions we can know are our own. And we’d better be very clear about those. Can you visualize and verbalize yours, and the steps to achieve them, clearly enough to evaluate every tempting toy pushed at you with the question, “Does this serve my goals?” And then choose the ones that serve you more than you serve them.
© Kate Diamond 2006
posted by Kate Diamond @ 10:56 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home