Automation or Auto-nation

By: Jonathan Brazil

I've just recently returned from holidays in Eastern Europe with Sin. The trip not only opened my eyes to the beauty of the region but strangely enough to something that could not have been any further removed from the blissful life of relaxed travelling; technology! Always my thoughts turn to things of a technological nature. Nerdish behaviour or an imposed thought process? Just how difficult is it to actually switch off in a world where we are constantly reminded by the presence of automated wizardry?

The mobile phone has enabled people to communicate on the move but the wealth of add-ons to the telecommunications network behind the phones enables mobile banking, shopping, e-mail and a host of other everyday services. In an ironic twist of technology, modern lives have been abstracted away from the organised behaviour of our predecessors to a chaotic subsidence invoked by supposed automated organisation gadgets. We no longer seek to have things prepared because we are too accustomed to relying on the presence of some machine that will make everything alright.

The relationship is co-dependant; through our lack of organisation and unwillingness to prepare, we have created a demand for these automated machines. Demand increases the presence of these machines thus we become even lazier and less organised because we rely on them being there to help us. How many times have you found yourself saying that you must go to the bank and then end up some hours later either on a street with no visible sign of a bank but merely a hole in the walls or you log on to the internet and complete your transactions online?

While on holiday this year and every time that I travel with work, I never avail of foreign exchange facilities locally before I leave. Instead I arrive in the country and locate the nearest ATM and withdraw the local currency on my credit card. This is good, I get a better exchange rate, and logically this is the smart thing to do.

However, what happens if I arrive in a country late at night with an urgent need for cash and my card doesn't work or I can't find an ATM? My lack of preparation and dependency on the availability of such facilities has landed me in trouble and a very uncomfortable night of sleeping rough will be my penalty.

Workers these days are so busy. They are busy waiting to download information from the web, busy waiting for the telephone to ring, busy rebooting computers, busy finding an area that yields a good mobile network signal, busy filling out electronic organisers and calendars, the list goes on. It is indisputable that technology has had a positive effect on our lives and certainly improves the efficiency of many tasks. However, I would suggest that with respect to our normal living conditions and organisational ability, technology has had a detrimental effect on our lives. We are constantly waiting for technology to catch up with our needs; proof in essence is that we always complain about technology not being available when we need it.

The world is now an automated place with every move that we make and every action that we take being monitored in a scarily Orwellian-like 1984 fashion. Whether it is the glow of our televisions, mobile phone displays, PDA screens or computer monitors, we too watch our telescreens for instruction. Winston Smith lived for rebellion and freedom but if we were given a release from the technological grasp of our world, what would we do, how would we organise ourselves without machines?

Is it the case that in this self-perpetuated, fast-paced life which we transcend, that people have actually become lazier? That the illusion of busy lifestyles has all but erased from living memory that it is possible to live a trouble free life without the need for automated assistance? Technology has an ever increasing presence in our lives. Ubiquitous and pervasive computing will go a long way to ensuring that technology is always at our fingertips but if somebody pulls the plug or the battery goes dead, will we know what to do to ensure that our lives don't stop also?