EDITOR'S PERSPECTIVE: Technology will rule our everything

EVERY generation since the word technology was first used has claimed it was taking over – and now it is. As a modern day slave to its rhythm, I had fallen victim to it, but smiled as I realised the irony of its inability to understand irony.

They thought they had peaked in the industrial revolution, but that was only the beginning of a pursuit that would eventually lead to our lives being ruled by something that would, in turn, make most of us largely superfluous to the system that hooked us in and we have followed for the past couple of centuries.

Radio, machinery, cars, televisions, more efficient machinery, faster cars and planes, better televisions, phones, cars and planes that will drive themselves, most machinery no longer needed, everything on a phone, then… who knows. If it can be run without people then we will have it.

AI will write for you, make sense of the data, you don’t need anyone in a shop to serve you. You don’t need a shop. You don’t nee a television or newspaper to give you or news. At least you think you don’t!

What do we need? What do we want? Who knows anymore?

Everything can be done virtually – well, virtually everything – so maybe we’ve peaked.

Undoubtedly we haven’t though and it’s scary because the number of people who are making decisions as to all of our futures in minimal. You might have a vote, but that’s as far as it goes. That won’t help you choose the future.

The tech giants are the ones really in charge – they are making the decisions because they have the superpower which is, of course, money.

Technology runs the moment and ruins it. Take “the beautiful game”. No, not Twister.

A goal is scored, thousands celebrate, only for, moments later, a machine to reverse the decision over a split second, a miniscule distance. Spontaneity is gone because we can’t have human error any more. Sport, industry, travel, what we read and listened to, all over-analyses and data-driven to ensure not one of whatever is produced is left unsold. Not one has any imperfection.

Soon, neither will people because we will be able to change everything about ourselves, look how we want, feel how we want.

It’s kind of strange in an age where we are “celebrating” those who may previously have been judged to be “different” that we choose to make us all the same.

Technology kills the moment, kills the individual, removes character – but only when it chooses to. Or those who provide it do.

They already control so much of our lives, but they want it all.

Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, said – well, I had to Google it as I couldn’t remember the exact quote and I was asked to verify that I was human by clicking a box next to the words “I am not a robot”.

In the end, I got lost among a list of apt quotes, though I was looking for “technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”

More apt seemed: “’Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!’ The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm” or “In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”