Technology, Identity, And Social Class

Social class, and therefore social identity,
used to be measured by the individuals' proximity
to labour, and to the labour saving devices
that made the lives of working folk more efficient.

The more anyone could pay another
to handle the machinery of everyday life
-make their food, wash their clothes,
organise the payment of utilities bills,
clean their houses, and mind their children,
the more obviously middle class they became.

Some men even secretly outsourced
the bearing of their children
to women who were not their wives
and had to secret about it ever after. 

Working class men who toiled all day,
week after week for fifty weeks a year 
made their wives labour for nothing,
as if detachment from emotional support,
and not being paid for what they did,
was the essence of working class female labour.

What working class men need most
was a pub that was always open
when they were not working
so that as men their tribalism
and their distance from family
that defines their social class
could be well better supported.

Nowadays there is no working class,
the factories men once laboured in
are memories consigned to distant histories.
The labour saving machines their wives
were not paid to use have been replaced
by push button/pre-packed lives
where computers have gained control
over lives defined by consumerism
much more than anyone wants to see;
how we live lacks the sense of agency
that we had before new technology
gave us all identical non-identities.