It’s six in the morning. I can’t sleep a wink. The whites of my eyes are more red than white and my eyelids are swollen but I’m not sleepy. Once and for all I have to defeat this diabolical machine. Why is it so difficult? I have three hours left before I have to go to work, and since I’m not going to sleep any more, the only thing to do is keep going, right? Yes. Computer solitaire has helped me kill four hours that were already dead. Really dead. I did nothing. I have lost four hours of my life. Anxiety sneaks up. With it comes the realisation that now it will be impossible to rest. And all because of a damned machine. I may have some responsibility, but I prefer not to think about that right now.

Wait. No. Don’t do that to me. Yes, it’s crashed. And no key works. Not even the mouse. Stay calm. Breathe… Control, Alt, Delete. I hold my breath. This program is not responding. I know that! Again, (because repeating something that hasn’t worked makes a lot of sense), Control, Alt, Delete. For the love of God, it’s six in the morning and… noooo…! Everything has disappeared. An idea comes to me that is so twisted, so shameless, so crazy radical, like putting a fork in the toaster… I unplug from the wall. I know I shouldn’t but I’ve been awake for 24 hours. It’s the last chance… I turn it back on… Yes! I’ve done it! Take that, machine! Now, where was I in the game, has it saved…?

To sum up. I haven’t done anything constructive. I haven’t seen any human beings. I haven’t rested. And worst of all, I haven’t really had a good time. In fact, I have suffered, and now, with added anxiety, I am worse off because I feel guilty for not having taken advantage of these hours of my life.

When I bought the computer, I planned to use it to work, write and sometimes watch a movie or listen to music. The saddest thing is that I don’t even waste hours doing cool things, but rather play the usual boring games that come with the installation. We are slaves to the machines. Terminator, (by the way, Schwarzenegger at his best), was not that far from the truth.

What about the first time you saw a person walking through the park and talking, apparently to themselves? I found it unnerving. A friend of mine said that in the same situation, he thought poor man. Of course, the world is full of many misfortunes and many people in unfortunate circumstances; what are we supposed to think? It turns out that he was talking on his hands-free mobile. Nowadays most of us do it. Yet it still freaks me out a little when I see it in public.

That we are such slaves that we cannot be without our mobile seems a bit embarrassing to me. It has become so important that we have the need to be able to pick it up at any moment, without interrupting what we are doing. What comes next? Conversations without a device? By telepathy? Some years ago I survived, I must even admit that I lived, without a mobile. Don’t ask me how. I don’t remember it any more and I get anxious just thinking about it. An aside: I can’t tell you how much I don’t know about the capabilities of my mobile because I literally don’t know!

And how many times did you try to program the VHS, (yes, I’m old, I still remember VHS) because you could; without looking at the instructions, but you ended up recording another channel and you spent an hour searching for what you supposedly recorded, without much hope, although you knew perfectly well that it couldn’t have been your fault.

It’s not even just about modern technology. Those who take the car to go 150 metres down the street to go to a café, when they have never even taken the car out of town. But they don’t mind paying insurance, MOT, monthly payments, fuel, because I need the car. Indeed. You need it to spend the long weekend in a traffic jam that takes you a day to get out of. What a great time we had! We were on the beach for three whole hours before we had to leave!

But just to be modern for a moment, though it’s a struggle, I admit: AI. There are so many questions. Not least where it leaves artists and creators. Some say it will be a useful tool, others that it will destroy jobs. Some say it will enhance global communication, others that we will never more know what is real and what is fake. I don’t know. Yet. It’s all happening so fast. What I can say is that it freaks me out a little, while at the same time I make use of it. I suppose it all depends on in whose hands it finds itself. Like anything, since time began, let’s face it, it will be able to be used for good or ill. And that’s what we need to be aware of.

What scares me the most is that it is no longer a question of living with the machines. We have to seriously consider how we are going to survive them. At this rate human beings’ days are numbered and I don’t know if I would like to be present at the end of days. End of Days. Wasn’t that another Schwarzenegger movie? Maybe the governor knows something that we mere mortals don’t…

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Episode Twenty-One: Fictional Icons