Fast Times

"The corporation is supposed to take us outside ourselves. We design these organized bodies to respond to the market, face foursquare into the world. But things tend to drift simply inward. Gossip, rumor, promotions, personalities, it's only natural, isn't it--all the human lapses that take up space in a company soul. But the world persists, the world heals in a way. You feel the contact points around you, the caress of linked grids that give you a sense of order and command. It's there in the warbling banks of phones, in the fax machines and photocopiers and all the oceanic logic stored in your computer. Bemoan technology all you want. It expands your self-esteem and connects you in your well-pressed suit to the things that slip through the world otherwise unperceived."
---- from the Underworld by Don Delillo

The modern age of technological advances marks our lives with promises of greater efficiencies brought on by fast modes of transport and faster communications. This speed is needed in an age where the status quo goes by the name of change and where the fear of being left behind demands flash second decisions from all. Greater efficiencies promise greater production and even greater revenues for a world intoxicated with greater consumption.
We eagerly follow the economists who, armed only with the “scientific” principles of measurement, preach that a larger proprietorship of material wealth is equated to better living standards. But there is a caveat to this mantra, which is ignored by many: better living standards measured only by material riches do not equate to happiness.
In this fast paced age of quality-time, instant-gratification and online dating, everything passes by in a blurry haze of uncertainty and chaos. Material constructions have such obtrusive and overbearing presence in our lives that we feel dwarfed in the monstrous greatness of technological feats of skyscrapers and aircraft carriers.
We wear our well-pressed suits and take the subway to work with extreme belief in these feats of technology to hold up against all uncertainties. Thinking, at least human error is out of the equation. Taking humans out of the equation certainly brings greater efficiency, ensures faster assembly lines and less retirement checks. But the result is the alienation of man from everything on a much greater in scale than Marx ever dreamt of. This alienation through uncertainty and chaos is a gift of technology to our lives. Lives that are shackled by the wires and cables that promised of greater connectivity and greater efficiencies.
Since we pursued the advancement of technology as a means to achieve happiness in the first place, this resulting unhappiness marked by the faint glow of our computer monitors can not be understood.
Obviously, the search for order and control over this life-on-testosterone leads us to technology. The digital cameras, the internet, a facebook profile and youtube videos, are all ways to capture moments of our lives which are sorted by criteria such as Date-Added, Relevance and Most Viewed. We look at them time and again for some solace. Our families gather around the televisions to peer into the lives of coked out celebrities and their big houses with well maintained gardens. We hope to get a sense of moral righteousness and a happy feeling that at least we are better than them by comparing which is worse.
The corporations, knowing that people are desperately looking at them to better their lives, bombard us with a false sense choice wrapped in colorful packages. We feel in control when we “choose” our favorite box of cereal out of the super-market shelves. We look for so much control over ourselves and over nature that we have come down to sticking poisoned needles in our faces to control aging. The wrinkles on our faces are not attached to worthy memories. So we erase them.
In our quest for better lives and happiness, we have started to look towards technology. Technology is the new God dictating His rules of living in short syncopated messages of internet lingo. We have made this mistake before and we shall never learn.

----inspired by Don Delillo's Underworld