I was struck by how a piece by the late Oliver Sacks in the February 11 New Yorker, “The Machine Stops” engages alienation anxiety via E.M. Forster’s story of the same title.
Sacks is writing at the end of his life of how “Every minute, every second, has to be spent with one’s device clutched in one’s hand. Those trapped in th[e] virtual world are never alone, never able to concentrate and appreciate, in their own way, silently. They have given up, to a great extent, the amenities and achievements of civilization: solitude and leisure, the sanction to be oneself, truly absorbed, whether in contemplating a work of art, a scientific theory, a sunset, or the face of one’s beloved.”
While Sacks was, in his own estimation, a grumpy old man, out of touch with technology, I’m sorry he didn’t see the promise of these “devices.” But neither did he suspect that we are on the cusp of a revolution far more disruptive to Western culture than the industrial revolution that gave birth to the technology he wistfully longs for in his piece–steam engines.
Much as the generation before his viewed the telephone as an unforgivable intrusion into home and family life, they ultimately realized it was a necessity. Not just for them to speak with distant family members, but also to conduct business without having to leave their families to go the office.
The earliest marketing for mobile technology touted its ability to allow us to spend time with our children when otherwise we would be stuck at the office. “Mommy, I want to go to the beach!” a child told her paper-shuffling, executive mother. With her trusty 8 lb. laptop, however, she was able to work on the beach (at least for forty five minutes before her battery died).
People might have seen me hunched over my smart phone as my son and I stood in the garden at Chenonceau–a chateau in the Loire Valley–and shaken their heads. Here’s a typical American, unable to “be” here and appreciate it with his son.
The only thing I can say is that ten years ago I would never have been able to be there with my son at all. I would have been sitting in an office in New York making phone calls and reading emails, taking care of business. While it may be unpleasant to consider how prevalent these infernal devices are, it might be better to consider how unpleasant it would be without them.
But more central to my concern with Sacks and Forster’s dystopian visions is that what they observed and were critiquing, and what made me have to take time to send emails and spreadsheets while in the garden at Chenonceau, was the use of connective technology under the rubric of alienated Capitalist valuation structures.
Why does Forster’s Kuno, separated from his mother by “The Machine,” not live with or see his mother? It’s because Capital, or Capital’s evil twin, Totalitarianism, deemed that mother and son are more productive separated.
People living through the height of the industrial revolution and human-as-machine labor saw how dehumanizing it was. They saw technology as the disruptor, but the disruptor was Capital. When people are worth less than the goods they manufacture, when they have little to no physical or emotional connection to the work they do, they become alienated.
We are in a transitional phase. I nervously check my phone all the time because I am anxious that at any moment something might happen at work that will derail my business and livelihood–and I am comparatively well off. I am also eager to stay ahead of my competition. These are not healthy attitudes that can go on forever.
We must use the next phase of technology to unplug. I would not have to “stay on top” of so many things if I had an AI assistant capable of performing the more mechanical tasks that take a lot of my time. But more importantly, if I knew that I and my family were secure via a social safety net and we had a culture that respected human beings for what they knew and how they acted rather than how much money they had accumulated, I wouldn’t need to be anxious at all.