Watching people sit in front of small screens showing moving pictures of smiling and helpful faces, directing and informing, the tinny sounding voice coming from their headphones.
All sat in a row, unconscious Air Traffic Controllers, misguiding flights of doomed knowledge to their flaming demise.
The sound of clicking buttons ,filling the air,akin to the beaks of caged pigeons that have worked out which response brings the reward, green light red light, but somewhere underneath it, the impression it's just automatic and will be forgotten by most as soon as the cage door opens and the outside world beckons.
Some of these people could do this for the rest of their lives and still be in exactly the same position as they started.This doesn't meant they're in any way stupid, just strangers in a world where technology and progress have left behind those without interest or inclination.
No matter how far the World moves away from what it may consider to be an old fashioned way of life, people still retain that basic quality of the old fashioned, at least in their attitudes towards work and what they want from it. It would be great to think that everyone would actually be able to fit into the mapped out future that technology seems to be giving us but they won't, they don't want to. They want to be able to do what they did when they were young and the world around them was easier and without the need to be IT savvy. It doesn't fit everyone's shape and why should it? Not everyone one is enthralled by the ever increasing need to be up to date with the touch screen and constant social media fix. For some, it is a daunting and worrisome prospect when faced with the computer or the unruly spirit that is The Internet. It only re-enforces their feelings of having been left behind and they despise it for doing so. They spit the words out like a venom and curse the day these miniature satanic mills were spawned. They are shackled to them and forced to learn about things they would rather not simply because the modern work place requires it to be so. This is the reality of the everyday for the forgotten and out of date.
I watch as they struggle against their bonds, time and again they cry out for the simpler life of the pick and shovel and the honesty of the factory floor. I soothe them with soft words, tell them that this too shall pass and that they can only benefit from this short passage of discomfort, it is for their own good,it will help them. It is only learning something new. I tell them I understand their need to return to the past but the present and hopefully the future is what we have. They can learn, I know they can.
I have to believe this, because this in turn, is for my own good..
All sat in a row, unconscious Air Traffic Controllers, misguiding flights of doomed knowledge to their flaming demise.
The sound of clicking buttons ,filling the air,akin to the beaks of caged pigeons that have worked out which response brings the reward, green light red light, but somewhere underneath it, the impression it's just automatic and will be forgotten by most as soon as the cage door opens and the outside world beckons.
Some of these people could do this for the rest of their lives and still be in exactly the same position as they started.This doesn't meant they're in any way stupid, just strangers in a world where technology and progress have left behind those without interest or inclination.
No matter how far the World moves away from what it may consider to be an old fashioned way of life, people still retain that basic quality of the old fashioned, at least in their attitudes towards work and what they want from it. It would be great to think that everyone would actually be able to fit into the mapped out future that technology seems to be giving us but they won't, they don't want to. They want to be able to do what they did when they were young and the world around them was easier and without the need to be IT savvy. It doesn't fit everyone's shape and why should it? Not everyone one is enthralled by the ever increasing need to be up to date with the touch screen and constant social media fix. For some, it is a daunting and worrisome prospect when faced with the computer or the unruly spirit that is The Internet. It only re-enforces their feelings of having been left behind and they despise it for doing so. They spit the words out like a venom and curse the day these miniature satanic mills were spawned. They are shackled to them and forced to learn about things they would rather not simply because the modern work place requires it to be so. This is the reality of the everyday for the forgotten and out of date.
I watch as they struggle against their bonds, time and again they cry out for the simpler life of the pick and shovel and the honesty of the factory floor. I soothe them with soft words, tell them that this too shall pass and that they can only benefit from this short passage of discomfort, it is for their own good,it will help them. It is only learning something new. I tell them I understand their need to return to the past but the present and hopefully the future is what we have. They can learn, I know they can.
I have to believe this, because this in turn, is for my own good..
