How Did Hope Become Hubris?

The new First World hyper-Capitalism
has been confirmed as a form of gambling,
built on long-suspected insider trading,
markets rigged for the benfit of the 1%:
who's wealth is greater than the banks,
and who's power is greater than the courts
in which they fight each other.

In courts the main point of the wealth
being fought over is the dispay of entitlement
which the rich want the poor to see as 'entertainment'.
where oaths mean little to lawyers who in court
will argue that black is white and vice versa,
whilst rich rub the noses of the poor in the debts
they havce to run up to watch the spectacle.

The wealth of the 1% is above all accurate examination.

Commentators fight shy of reversing the equation,
and suggesting that gambling is Capitalism run amok. 

It is easy to see why. Present day Capitalism
bets on future technologies controlled by the few,
particularly through AI, where before the tech
have been tested as 'safe for the public to adopt',
the few use it to maximum conrol and profit
making government pay for with public money
that is more than the riches Croesus* ever dreamed of.

Meanwhile the public get used to not trusting
their own senses whilst being used as human loss leaders
to work out how best test to sustain the use such technology.

*The legend of Croesus (595 - 546 BC) king of Lydia, was that his wealth
was beyond countng. Croesus was the first ruler in the world to mint gold and silver coins.

  

Parenthood Today

 When the technology we are urged to trust

seems to us like an errant child we want to punish,
because it has done what we didn't want it to do,
the fault probably started with us; as adults,
we never learned how to control it, or what makes it work. 

It is up to us, the older we get, to simplify
what we rely on, and make technology our servant
on terms we prefer, rather than allow ourselves
to be led by advertising that talks tech up
to be 'the new master', The Way ahead.

I do not want to quantify the media hot airtime
that is dedicated to promoting AI as 'the new tool
to be increasingly efficient' when as technology goes
it is jut another servant that we have to set limits on,
and define it's tasks tightly, if it is to meet our needs.

Advertising is to materialism what porn is to sex,
illustration to the point of unaware self-parody.
We need a wider awareness than adverts allow,
whatever they pay for, to help us define need over want.

The Tools, The Tasks, And The Space To Perform Them

When people say 'Smartphones are wonderful things'
they don't say it as often as the adverts for the phones
that manufactures put out to support the illusion
of progress that lies behind popular turbo-capitalism.

And smartphones do have design features that I like,
more than their equivalents on older designs of mobile,
like the ease of the keypad and the message writing process.

But this is where I part company with the rest of the human race,
People say that the 'smart' in smartphone comes from how many tasks
it can perform, how many programmes such a small machine can store.

In 1978 I bought one of the new range of calculators.
It could perform thirty four different maths processes
including the bane of every maths student, logarithms.
I used it for at most eight of those functions,
and half of those eight I practiced in my head,
to maintain my speed of doing mental arithmetic.

If a smartphones are like swiss army knives
-so many apps and functions in so small a machine
only so many of which can operate simultaneously-
then does that make an old fashioned laptop
more like a kitchen, with more space for the blades?
You decide what space you need to use the apps
that manufacturers insist are 'the future' for today.

Tomorrow the apps might change,
but knowing the space you need
to use them in comfort remains your constant.