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Which Damn Fool Thought This Was Progress?

from The Cracks Start Appearing by Active Minds

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about

There’s no denying that modern technology helps us to communicate with other people all across the world much easier. Widespread access to computers and the internet is something that many people in the developed world now take for granted. But we shouldn’t get sucked into thinking that such technology is available to everybody or that everyone’s life is made simpler by it.
In the UK there is definitely a “digital divide” between those who can readily access the internet and those who can’t, and that divide gets wider as the assumption is that more and more people can use the web. It’s now got to the stage where accessing affordable train travel, for example, becomes very difficult without using online deals. Latest figures show that one in six households here have no internet access at all, and many of those who do can only do pretty basic stuff because of insufficient confidence or skills, or because the technology they’re using isn’t very up-to-date.
As technology progresses at an ever-faster rate, more people get left behind and forgotten. Public services are increasingly becoming things which people are expected to access online, and those who can’t do so therefore become excluded. And the more were expected to be online, the more we’re also expected to keep updating our technology, at considerable expense. Within just a few years computers can be become outdated, so that accessing newer websites becomes either very slow or even impossible. The tech companies must be laughing all the way to the bank.
This doesn’t have to happen. Access to basic information should be the right of everyone in society, and there’s simply no need to have it packaged in such a way that it becomes inaccessible without hi-tech skills or expensive modern equipment. We’re just all getting too sucked in and trapped by the technology which should be helping to make life easier for all - not just for some.

lyrics

The companies have succeeded in re-inventing the wheel with information technology, without which you’re made to feel that you no longer have access to the things that you really need - a small, faltering step for people, but a giant leap for corporate greed. There’s talk of books becoming obsolete with everything on screen - knowledge only for a privileged elite is what they really mean. How ridiculous it is to think that there’ll be a modem in every home when half the world’s population have never even dialed a phone? Communication and information - these are not new ideas. Mankind has been using them for thousands of years. New technology can be helpful, but we are digging our own graves if we make such things essential and we become mere slaves.

credits

from The Cracks Start Appearing, released December 19, 2014

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Active Minds Scarborough, UK

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