Abetted by technology, corporate America has become Big Brother
Image courtesy of Kharsohtun by way of Creative Commons.
Better living through technology? Sure, when it works.
But more and more I see technology becoming a dehumanizing influence on our lives, requiring that we spend more and more of our discretionary time on meeting the demands of the digital beast, abetted by a corporate mentality that favors money over all else.
A month ago I noticed my mobile phone bill had gone up by $5. I called the company to ask why and was given every answer but the real one – because they wanted more money. But they offered to switch me to a different plan, one that would do away with my ability to use my phone as a hotspot but would cost $10 a month less. I told them to do it.
Cut to yesterday. I receive a text message that says the mobile phone service provider is charging X number of dollars to my credit card. The amount is the same as the previous month.
So I spend a big chunk of this morning getting to the bottom of the problem, which appears to be that my new plan didn’t “take,” whatever that means.
This comes on the heel of a slew of automated text messages from medical entities wanting me to pay my bills – in one case I had already paid the bill and in the other, it’s set up to automatically bill to my credit card. And let’s not talk about the $5,000 error made by the hospital, which has yet to be resolved.
Technology is fine. But in the hands of corporations that don’t give a damn about anything except money, it has become a thing of evil. It has two imperatives: the alleged convenience it provides to us, the customer, which is debatable; and second, the benefit nobody talks about – reduced corporate costs, i.e., higher profits.
The corporate scramble for lower costs and higher profits has cheapened all our lives. A significant portion of the inflation we see today is the result of corporate profiteering. Their cost-cutting measures, with the transfer of work to the customer, have made our lives more stressful and less rewarding, especially at the hands of a quixotic technology base.
Orwell tells us that government is Big Brother. No. George got it wrong. Corporate America is Big Brother. Government is only the Drunk Uncle.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
In this photo the author (right) explains to visitors how the newspaper is assembled during an open house. Photo courtesy of the Daily News.
Very soon, the Daily News will abandon its old, proprietary computer system for a brand new, PC-based computer system.
With this change, we will move up a notch in the high-technology race that seemingly shifted into high gear during the 1980s and has yet to slow down. Every week, we hear about a new gadget or application that offers to make our lives better.
In some cases, these gadgets actually do make life better. I can’t imagine a world without CAT scanners, or even cordless telephones.
But it also seems increasingly true that these gadgets have evolved to such absurd levels of complexity that they no longer serve the people they were intended to help. In fact, they’ve become an end unto themselves.
This fact was driven home to me last week as we began to learn about our new computers and software.
They are amazing machines. They do most anything, and they do it three or four different ways: They check your spelling, check your grammar, play your CDs, fax your files, surf the web and answer your questions.
Therein lies the problem: They are a little too amazing.
They do too much.
It’s normal to feel a little overwhelmed when learning an unfamiliar and complicated new skill. But I’m not unfamiliar with these machines, and I’m not a computer Luddite. Yet I am most definitely swooning over the sheer volume of … “stuff” on these machines … and the intricacy of its use.
The computer industry is especially guilty of overcomplicating what should be simple procedures. This overcomplication exists on every level of the computer experience, from the insane number of ways any one command can be executed, down to even the muddy syntax of the “documentation” (computerese for “instruction manual”).
But this overcomplication extends to much of the high technology we are told we need: telephones with so many features that they cannot be deciphered; kitchen appliances that require so much programming to do something that it would be easier to do it by hand; VCRs all across America that blink 12:00; the endless parade of digital cell phones, analog cell phones, pagers, check-writers, electronic games, CD players, DVD, HDTV, LD and DCS. …
I feel like one of the robotic workers in Fritz Lang’s science fiction classics “Metropolis.”
Our purpose is no longer to use these machines to accomplish a task, but to make the machines do everything they are capable of doing.
People are starting to rebel.
The “nesting” phenomenon of the early to mid-’90s was an opening shot in our War of Rejection against this insane spiral of technology. The stress of attempting to cope became too much for some people, who chose to hide out and decompress rather than hurl themselves into the clicking, beeping fray.
These days, the move to lead simple lives manifests our desire for the serenity we enjoyed when people, not machines, were more important.
When our computers are installed, I will try to learn the fastest, easiest and most direct ways to do my work. The rest will stay in the “documentation” – there if I need it, I suppose, but out of sight and, with any luck, out of mind.
This column was originally published in the Wednesday, May 27, 1998 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .