🔴 NEW DIRECTION   Ed. No. 7 / JUST HOW COMPLICATED CAN WE MAKE LIFE FOR OURSELVES?

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

(We are not running technology. Technology is running us.)

Some of hundreds of Mandalas (windows to the soul) 

hand coloured fastidiously by your Editor’s 91 year old Mother.

Colouring: Uriel Williams

From: Neville Williams <n.b.williams@optusnet.com.au>

Subject: JUST HOW COMPLICATED CAN WE MAKE LIFE FOR OURSELVES?

Date: 18 May 2024 at 3:55:35 pm AEST

To: OPINION EDITOR SYDNEY MORNING HERALD <smhopinion@smh.com.au>

Dear Herald Opinion Editor,

 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY DUE FOR AN OVERHAUL

 

There is no doubt that we can make life 100 times more complicated than at present but enough is enough already. We are experiencing information overload.

Do you ever feel like giving out a primal scream sparked by our increasing lack of common sense and exponentially growing ignorance about our shared humanity?

Truly I went to make a Medicare claim online the other day. 

What torture us human beings can put each other through all for a fifty buck reimbursement. It’s just silliness.

In any area of life now you might like to pick it is a necessity to take a university degree even to understand the basics. Simply we can't be an expert on everything.

My Mother recently had a pacemaker battery replaced at her local hospital. 

I mean talk about surreal. A nurse met me following the operation to pass on an “offical looking box” and simply said, “PLUG-IT-IN???” That was it - no explanation. You see this dysfunctional system that we’ve manufactured expects me to do the homework.

[It appears that "someone(?)" wants to change the system and that takes application to evolve the understanding properly. No time for that today in our world.  So however we can camouflage or pass off the responsibility to do it properly by duck shoving it onto someone else we do. This is not good enough.]

Whatever happened to a thing called service or the space to be kind? The system now is all about processing and the faster the better. Now I’m getting SMS messages saying “you have been requested to send a routine transmission of your heart device data”. Oh Puhlease! Where is the civility/humanity in all of this? If it's so important to the benefit of the patient explain it properly upfront. 

My Mother is not a robo-cop lump of rehabilitated meat she is a human being who has made immeasurable humane contribution to this now techno crazy complicated world. Practises like this are insulting our humanity.

       And we wonder why nature is responding the way it is?
       We are becoming detached from our own better selves.
       Nature in turn reacts to rebalance the unbalanced. That's its job. 

When we separate from ourselves discord is the response. Our pain is life longing for itself. If that sounds too out there for some it can only be stated that we need to get in touch with our own life. This subject should be top of the agenda but it’s not even anywhere to be seen. This all does not compute to those who live in their heads.       And we all do all too often these days.

That brings us to what is probably the point of the arrow as far as human change making in this world is concerned. 

We need to put a spotlight on the harbingers of the Information Technology Revolution. They think they are connecting us. 

Quite the opposite in fact. No humanity = No connection.

The technocrats don’t seem to care about anything other than winning their own race to nowhere. Social concern and community responsibility? Forget it. 

They create a monstrous maze that just keeps bolstering their own fragile fractious sense of self. Where is someone now like Steve Jobs who actually understood he was designing computer technology for human beings? 

I went to speak to a telecommunications tech giant the other day and there were six staff all with their heads buried in their individual PC’s. Extensions of machines.         

I waited a minute and a half and not one of them lifted a head from their busyness to even acknowledge me let alone motion towards help. That’s not customer service. 

Have we forgotten how to be human? This is a particularly pertinent question for those involved with Information Technology. 

Humanity needs to know it’s own self .

Machines and technology are fine in their place. 

Little wonder that the MATRIX films were so successful. The zeitgeist of its storytelling was pretty spot on for the way things are becoming.

People want to know about themselves but too often we confuse ourselves on the journey. The IT industry is not helping. Currently far too often it is hindering.

In this current information overloaded crazy milieu surrounding us we are being robbed of steadfast patience, clarity and focus by a ruthlessly demanding world of blind unconsciousness. 

It can bring you to tears watching this peverting injustice. 

This is cruel and points towards a civilisation in decline.

Life is not about numbers, dotting I’s and crossing T’s and all of that associated palaver of techno bureacracy. 

Life is about feeling something. 

WE NEED TO SAVE OURSELVES FROM OURSELVES.

It comes down to how change is all introduced and understanding what really is important. Try a little bit of love and kindness. It’ll always be in fashion.

Kind regards, Neville Williams

“...And the people in the houses

     All went to the university

     Where they were put in boxes

     And they came out all the same …”

                - 'LITTLE BOXES' by folk singer Malvina Reynolds

FOOTNOTE 

Craftwork by Uriel Williams

While we’re on a folk theme here’s a hand cut and sewn bed cover. 
Countless patient hours executed by a loving hand. 
Interesting to note that at my Mother’s aged care village under this bed cover is a device 

that tells a registered nurse in an office down the hallway if my Mother has fallen out of bed. 
A positive note in the Technological Revolution.

        STOP, LOOK & LEAP         

🔴 

I have deliberately redacted segments of this article 

to give you the opportunity to substitute what you believe 

should be said here.

We all have our own views in these matters!...

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