Obeying the Techno Sheepdogs.

I had to make two phone calls today to sort out a couple of simple issues. One should have taken around five minutes, the other about three. I was on the phone for nearly an hour, waiting and waiting and waiting and listening to endless recorded announcements, mostly along the lines of ‘if you want to do this, use this app’ and ‘if you want to do that, use that app.’ I didn’t want to do any of them, so let me make it quite clear:

I don’t have apps; I’m a totally app-less person. I don’t even have a smart phone because I’ve never felt the slightest need of one. But maybe I’m fighting a losing battle because the smart phone is no longer a lifestyle accessory. It and a whole array of other technological facilities are becoming essential tools for normal function in the modern age, while the human dimension is falling ever more into irrelevance in the business of living a human life. Our affairs are now largely ordered by apps and algorithms which guide us surely and steadfastly to the will of the bureaucrats and the corporate world in order that we should play their game on their playing field for their benefit.

And the result of all this is that delays, dysfunction and unwonted difficulty are the mainstay of the daily grind. Frustration and stress are the default conditions, and resistance, as ever, is useless.

So maybe I should get a smart phone. Maybe I should walk through the ancient streets of Ashbourne poking and stroking it. And then maybe the whole population of our little market town will gravitate towards me, shuffling and grinning inanely until I am surrounded by a sea of Ashburnians, all crying:

Welcome, brother. Welcome home. Now you are one of us again. Let us sit upon the ground and tell fine stories of East Enders, Strictly Come Dancing, and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. Sit with us and smile, and we will instruct you in the ways of our masters and the bounty they convey.

Oh what a brave new world will lie before me until the blessed day when the Dark Rider glides alongside and says ‘Hop up, lad. Time to go and walk with your ancestors in the sunlight of reason and relaxation.’

 

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Incidentally, I spoke to my doctor today and he's not convinced that my problem is angina. One of the pieces doesn't fit, apparently. He wants to get me linked up to an ECG machine and have a listen to my heart. I wonder whether he'll come across my missing sanity down there.