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Tuesday 23 January 2018

260. This is my phone – and yet I live.

(+ this week’s book offers)
This is my phone –


No apps to tell me what I’ve eaten
No app for algorithms to tell me what music to listen to
No access to facebook (no facebook) to check on the 500 ‘friends’ I don’t know.
No twitter no twaddle
No mainline to my life for targeted advertising from consumer stalkers trying to turn me into a CMo (Consumer Moron)
No map app – so I actually have to look where I am going
No daily recharge
No camera function - so I see the world around me first hand
No cricked neck from permanently looking DOWN
No missing my actual life because of manically checking if the world is ‘liking’ me
No forced upgrades
No shit I didn’t ask for and don’t want.

As society self-harms with abandon; shopping in stores that are aiming to be human-staff-free, banks (ditto) stumbling towards a moronic future where being a moron is encouraged and facilitated by technology because it is so SO good for profits, I feel as if the Matrix is deep and I choked down the reality pill. 

OOOOH the media cry to self-driving cars, like children watching fireworks. Who asked for them? Who debated if they were a good idea? Is the answer to road deaths and bad health and wasting the earth’s resources not already with us? Don’t we call it public transport? (or walking – God forbid) But this is where rampant capitalism is leading us by the credit card.

SO – forget the Zombie analogy as in A. Chakrabortty’s article in The Guardian The Guardian last week

or in this blog last year Empire Zombies


Rampant Capitalism is a super vampire; smart/i phones are its fangs. CMos – the Lucy Westenra of this analogy -  are inured to the tech monster. The seemingly unquenchable desire to spend is its blood-feast. Everything else about us is obsolete. Soon humans will be blood sacks in the back seat of a motorised wheelchair capsule able only to swipe a screen. The vein through which it sucks out your life is your phone.

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For a list of all the other ‘essential’ technology I don’t have - T.V (since last century), car (since 2005) – or have never owned - dishwasher, microwave - check out blog 53. I Suffer from PANTS

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Remember to check out My BOOKS