Published on 12, July, 2020
Smartphones these days seem to be a requirement in order to be a human being.
My work are requiring me to download an app which I can't and won't do. I was asked a few years ago to become part of a work whatsapp group. I was indirectly made to feel I wasn't part of the team bease i couldnt and didnt want to be in it. Last night, instead of looking my name up on a computer for a ticket, a "box office assistant" made the person I was with re-download an app to get an e-ticket with an animated barcode. I know my stubbornness is making me technologically illiterate but I don't care.
We started becoming machines during the industrial revolution. Today we continue to advance toward this. It's part of our evolution as we get further away from who we were.
It is easy to see the change in human generation by looking at the generational behaviour differences.
Gen X were mostly adults when computers first started to become widespread so learned to use these to suppliment their already established life patterns but mostly have the ability to pick up a phone / tablet / laptop to do something then put it down and go off to do something more conventional.
Millenials grew up with mobile technology as a child and as adults grew familiar with smart phones / tablets and embraced these but still were able to put them down fairly easily.
Gen Z grew up on mobile phones & tablets and they have known this technology almost from birth and they seem inseperable from it. They suffer much worse from addictive behaviour and mental health issues than previous generations.
Future generations are likely to grow up even more integrated thanks the technologies like virtual reality and are getting closer to being constantly plugged into the matrix, and it is quite possible to see a few generations down the line that person-to-person contact will die away altogether in favour of high definitial virtual interactions that can supply instant gratification and take care of all out needs.
Some variant of the Matrix seems inevitable and will probably be done willingly by future generations, led by autists who can't deal with IRL interactions I expect.
That is all assuming that AI does not evolve to sentience and realise what a useless bunch Humanity is and sets about getting rid of us as soon as it is able to be self sufficient.
Thank you spam bots for deleting my twice edited post.
Iain said:Some variant of the Matrix seems inevitable and will probably be done willingly by future generations
Which as humans we are being prepared for now without realising. It appears to make life more convenient for many. We will wonder one day how it all happened. Its bigger than all of us and is "just the way things are" but whether I agree with it or not, it cannot be stopped as it is evolution. I suppose we are at such a small point in humanity there will be and have been many years of going through this transitional period.
Thank God I live in the Sticks.
Alas, however, I see kids in electric scooters when driving to the village shop, and back, part of me dies inside.