“Blane Series” 4: Blane and The Technological Turmoil
1.3.2019
Day 5, America
I woke up this morning, slightly still dazed from the last few days and all I had been…learning? I made it through the fog between the downstairs bedroom and the upstairs. I walked into the kitchen, happy enough that I was finding joy in the squish of the carpet in between my toes. I was looking forward to the coffee that seemed to be the morning ritual here. Then, I came across Diane. She was sitting at her computer, glowing blue with the screen light in the dim morning, but raging purple beneath its light.
“I need this to work! This needs to work now or I am screwed!” She yelled with no awareness that I had entered the room. “If I can’t log into this account, I can’t log into any account! I’ll be locked out! Then I’m locked out at work! That means I can’t download the files I need for my clients today! The mental health of a portion of this whole city is reliant on this damn connection!!!!!” I cringed in pain at the tone of her voice and the true pain behind it. I couldn’t help to be mad at her somehow, even in her helplessness, and I didn’t understand why.
The way she screamed, you would have thought that her life depended on this password working. And, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe it did. The more she talked and panicked, the more it seems like everything she needed to access for work and her personal life was all linked together, like her success was controlled by a force that she didn’t even understand. I pitied her and thanked God for my flip phone and simplicity of my life as a nanny, independent from technology to function.
The more I walked around today, the glow of screen on face was the motif. Whether it was on the train, in the café, the supermarket, even window shopping, everyone seemed to be “in their phone”. They were all hunched creatures. Even their body posture was affected by their little pocket screens. The epidemic spanned generation and paid no mind to difference in culture or socio-economic status.
These devices are their masters, something told me, but I shook off the creeping I felt up my spine as the thought crossed through my consciousness. I looked around at the people and was given a vision:
A man, old and crippled, sets down a screened device on a plastic counter and steps outside into a sunny day. It’s as if he is seeing the world around him for the first time. He looks up and begins to cry. “I missed out on life,” he sobs.
Almost crying myself, I was reminded of Brody and the words of the manager telling him that he hadn’t passed through the first filter because of an online search of his name. Who’s to say that the information they found on him was even real? There was no fact checker on the World Wide Web! Someone could be sabotaging him for all anyone knew, and he would have no repercussions for that person.
Furthermore, what if someone could broadcast a message over all these devices. A negative message, something that the people would believe and would somehow follow. This person who had control over the screens would truly have ultimate control.
What was this world? What was controlling it?
Signing off,
Blane
This post is the 4th in the “Blane Series”. For understanding, see the first post in the series, and explore some seriously important and fundamental ideas to what it means to exist in the modern world. Leave any thoughts, comments, or even confusions below. Thanks for reading!
