Our Modern Times

The Big-Apple Countdown “Ten, Nine, Eight...”

Press and drop. Usher in the New Year.

Mechanically predictable!

i.e. Trains arrive on time.

Flip another calendar page.

Set the alarm.

Direct Withdrawal.

Punch in and out at work.

Set a dental appointment.

Ours is and has been a clocking society (data folks know this well).

Homo Sapiens are behavior-modified to fit and function in a mechanical society (the train will only stop at a station at a certain time for a certain minutes).

Forget "hunters and gatherers days". Stay put in one place. Amazon Prime will deliver.

Man in turn adapts: speed up, keep up…e.g. a tennis star hitting those machine-spit balls or in our strapped-in Charlie Chaplin situation, like a lab rat, to efficiently eat corn from a mechanized feeder ( to shorten break time).

We used to have Recreational hall (Rec Hall) - where at least, we bump into fellow joggers ("excuse me", "Pardon me"). Now it's just a gym, loft-type ceiling and individualized station. The work cubicles culture has spilled over to non-work culture, warehouse-style (industrializing our individual lives).

On top of it, people use their own devices to atomize music and audio books, ignoring gym big screens (everything is now wearables) showing sports, sports and sports for no one in particular. Even the big screen TV's and big popcorn buckets can't make it nowadays (unlike shared moments of grief in the past when bystanders stopped in front of an electronic store to watch an unfolding event e.g. Dallas 1963 or Moon Landing 1969).

Atomizing. Atomic Habits. Mass-Customizing. paperbacks that fit in one's pocket, then phones that fit in one's pocket. Strangers mumbling or facetiming to someone through the ethernet, then internet onto the other side of Earth, in-language.

Slowly then suddenly, we acquired machine-immunity while machine cross-adapt (per evolving algorithms) to human (our "Likes", comprehensively converted into data stream and customer profiling to be auctioned up to the highest ad bidder).

Voila. Our modern times.

Man and machine meeting each other half-way, each no longer an alien to the other - it's us human who are increasingly "alien" to fellow human being.

We are people of "low-tech" and high-cholesterol living in a high-tech low-cholesterol society.

No longer do we, the mass, tune in to mainstream news broadcasts at 6PM, or to rise on time to catch a commuter train, before stepping into once "maximum occupancy" elevator of the Twin Towers … Those social contexts and shared commons are passe (Bowling Alone).

Instead, we avail ourselves with flex and freedom @WeWork i.e. sharing suite and sharing software. It’s the latter that eats everyone’s lunch (Remote workers' 35% more likely be laid off). As of this edit, IBM and Tesla try to reverse the remote work trend for our post-Covid era.

The inflection point. Yes, we’ve got some setback (Y2K). But machine learns to learn. VC’s also learned. Society sifts and filters to force-rank talent like a Yelp's five-star rating.

It’s easier for man-machine, than for East- West (man-to-man) - so called the Last Few Inches among Earth's 8 Billion. So big Tech seek to exploit the minutia, the minutes and brain power of the mass to perfect their scheme: Massive Supply Chain. Economy of Scale. Zero-marginal cost economy.

You may watch a Kung Fu movie, interrupted frequently by YouTube's Cyber Monday ads. That is, if you had not ordered your groceries from a personal shopper … which used to belong to Beverly Hills concierge class (Warren Beatty type). Ads need to "sizzle" within a few seconds to avert SKIP AD and hold attention. Machine conforms to people’s wishes until we are burned out.

Apple version 15 but its users are still on their human 1st-version. Our sensory perceptions get inundated, and we amuse ourselves to death, this time, not via Television, but Twitter (now X). As if we still look for cave painting and hunters' arrows.

Last century called for an ethical decision: To press or not to press (the nuclear button). Now, it's who cares who presses what and when, to destroy where. We're busy watching "unprecedented" reality TV, "the like of which we have never seen before". Sell the sizzle not the steak. Let the red phone ring-no-answer and go to voicemail (sorry, but the caller's box is full).

This is huge. An existential matter. How are we going to measure the worth and value of each transaction as machine interacts with man (Walmart self-check-out, and now wants to move up market: the usual bait-switch scheme on a trek from Walmart to Whole Foods).

What about solitude, spare time and reflections! A walk in the woods.

We have access to data which grow exponentially at Moore's Law speed. But, how do we feed off and extract nuances (nutrition) to form a coherent and usable whole, stuff that suits us, and serves our core needs (Liquid Deaths).

Like a non-stop machine, we also sift, extract and de-fragmentize for survival. But currently we're confused and desensitized per deluge of choices. 8 Billion people have all returned to lost childhood, to relive that fascinating times as aliens and avatars in strange digital land. Our passport is our log-in code, and our command is at the speed of thoughts.

All of a sudden, it’s not Charlie Chaplin that makes us laugh. It's us who amuse ourselves to callousness. By morphing and conforming to machine, we have become what our hands have made: a new religion, make believing and passing the time on our inevitable journey from the Here/Now to the Here After.

Machine and man waltzing and stepping on each other's feet, the tune is Blue Danube, while the Titanic is seeking, one inch at the time given the gravitational pull toward the center of the Earth. That's icy cold deluge. The same with data deluge. It's Sink or Swim: And acquired skill set on how to calibrate and curate in an age of excess, not scarcity is key.

“If you missed the train I am on, you’ll know that I am gone” (smoke and sound of steam engine gaining speed as it pulls out of the Istanbul station). Then Sydney Lumet would say "Print".

That mechanical society and associated melancholy: steam shot up (stimulus) = tears streaming down (response) - now belongs in the past.

“You will hear the whistle blow a hundred miles”.