We Were Lied To

Computer technology will make our lives easier. Social Media will bring us together.

In reality, computers have complicated our lives in ways unimaginable, and nowhere is that more obvious when you're called upon to troubleshoot issues with friends and family. Phone trees. Password resets. Hacking. Phishing. Goddamned fucking printers. Bluetooth headphones. Wireless. Routers. Hot spots. Is the convenience of being able to turn off your porch light from the comfort of your bed really worth the aggravation that invariably accompanies setting up/maintaining the devices needed for that to work?  And then there's the computers themselves. Our entire lives (mine included) are now wrapped up in these slabs of glass and aluminum and silicon and when they don't work like their creators promised us they would, our collective blood pressure goes through the roof.

Let's not overlook the currently beyond-toxic hellstew of Social Media. Instead of bringing people together, platforms like Twitter have done nothing but divide us. There's no common ground and if left unabated, it's not going to be long before any sort of civil public discourse will seem as quaint as the horse and buggy. Everything is now my way or the highway, and those unfortunate folks who in the past would've been seen standing on a street corner screaming at buildings or medicated and receiving treatment for their mental illness are now given free reign to spew their crazy across the internet. It may be hyperbolic to say that Social Media will destroy civilization, but in its current incarnation, it's doing precious little to foster it.