Technology slows us down

Technology slows us down
Our humanness
Our who-we-are-ness.

When you tell a story,
You move Life
For you and your friends
At the speed of sound.
When you speak to them.
Words pop out, and
Those others hear you...
HEAR you...
Instantly.

When you move to writing,
It slows the time from you to
Friend.
But it slows it enough,
That you can hold Massive Ideas
in your mind,
Like photographs.

When you bring stories to theatre,
You need to hire the actors,
Get the theatre rented,
Cleaning, intermission,
Sets and costumes, etc.
The work adds that much more distance
Between you
And your friends.

When you bring stories to film (and TV),
OMG!, now you need to get the camera,
Gaffing, gripping, sound, set dec,
Locations, extras, unions, etc,
Looked after first.
And that isn't even whether you have a
Good script yet.
Years of fundraising.
(Pardon me, that's a world I'm
"inducted in", so I got into the lost part of me
Who looks for things like scripts, budgets,
Producers, directors, etc... So the last sentence
Really, doesn't fit the metaphor.)
(Doesn't fit metaphor.)

(Email and so on? Well isn't that
Just writing? Just enabled enough
That it can reach all around the globe?
Maybe a cacaphony, but still quite
Fast to your friends.)

Anyway, where was I. Yah, when you bring
The story into the interactive,
You only give clues of what it was you
Wanted to say, somewhere as an Easter Egg
Lost in the mass of the "Flashy Mundane"...
of the virtual world. The boringness wrapped
In beautiful particle effects and 3D lighting.
YOU need to build this incredible monstrosity
Of an Apparatus - like 3D gaming technology -
That the whole point of you talking to your friends
Is utterly erased.
All you're left with is the insurmountable vortex
Of technology that draws you into its
Ever expanding Need to feed on your
Human Intellect.
You demand that, to feed it,
You do not offer up only coal, oil, solar or nuclear
(Electricity, you know...)
But that you actually become It...
That you become the Machine by
Needing to create more of the Machine
Through needing to learn
To make Machines...
(To learn C or C++ or Java
Or whatever...)
By now you are speaking and thinking as a Machine.

All these things that you must offer
Your Self
to, to take away from your
Simplicity,
Your simple
Desire
To talk to your friends.

--- 27 July 2011