Increasingly, people are choosing big corporations over other alternatives. From retail to professional services, there’s an app for that! And it’s so convenient. You can do it all from your phone!
This is the 21st Century American dream come true. We are lazy, distracted, “busy,” and consequently, we want machines to do it all for us. Never mind that it was the machines themselves and our addictions to and reliance upon them that did this to us. This is where we are and there’s nothing to be done.
But when you choose the giant corporation over other alternatives such as smaller retailers, local retailers, local services and professionals, you are slowly and inexorably putting those alternatives out of business. It’s death by a thousand cuts, but it still kills the victim.
Imagine a world with no alternative to automated corporate services and their wares? I wonder if we can? It’s easy. Imagine Main Street without local businesses. Imagine many fewer of everything from doctors and lawyers to store clerks and mail carriers. (Imagine the army of unemployed…)
It’s called the automation of all things, and if it’s what we want, we shall surely get it.
Already we’ve shown our willing readiness to adopt almost any technology they can think up. We’ve proven that we don’t really care about a corporation’s actual motives as long as they give us what we want. And we’ve gone out of our way to demonstrate our complete trust of them to do the right thing (mostly) and not mess with the thing we love best — routine sameness. Don’t change procedures! What’s a privacy statement? We don’t care! Just give us everything we want right now!
Under these ripe circumstances, corporations would be crazy not to take advantage of us. What is there to stop them from doing just about anything they want (short of outright killing people) in the name of progress, innovation, and profit? Meanwhile, the lives of people increasingly take place on a two inch screen, where flickering images tell us what to think, eat, do, and buy. One is reminded of Plato’s Cave….
But beware, because even the tech gods have seen the ramifications of their plans, and while they’re going to do them anyway, they have betrayed vague murmurings of conscience about the social consequences of full on corporate ownership of the totality of everyday life. Frankly, we should be worried too. Masss unemployment, homelessness, mental health problems, social alienation, and drug abuse are just some of the risks of allowing the real world to slip away.
We need to think about these things, even though they’re depressing and annoying and frustrating. Otherwise, we’re going to get the world we’re building now, through our actions and choices each and every day. It’s just simple cause and effect.
