The Low Tech Revolution That Never Happened

Part of the left wing life in the 1980's
was being critical of the lobby
that made the values of a military economy
out to be more important than the civil life
that we were told that it was there to protect.

I was one of many who wanted to see
the factories that made military hardware
that supplied the arms for all the little wars
around the world that never stopped kept open.

I believed that the factories should stay open,
but be turned over to making peace time goods,
for people that needed them.
We should end 'Want' as well as we could.

Nearly forty years on from then, and what we have
in the developed west is vast amounts of money
spent on high tech pleasures developed in Silicon Valley
where the goods are controlled be the few and used by the many.
In the digital age pleasure is defined as detached
and it is supported by the glossiest promotion possible.

For all the change in budgets and priorities
this is not how I saw the future back then,
what I saw put skills into people's hands,
rather than disabling their critical faculties.