Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

High-Tech, Low-Thought

Whatever else advanced technology pretends to be, it is mainly a way to get ahead, to advance oneself beyond the lesser hoi polloi who know nothing about its mysterious trade. The whole point of technology is that it prevents serious discussion of anything - including itself - by creating an arcane genre. Consequently the technology permeating our world is not so much an instrument of corporate or personal power as it is a disease invading the minds of its promoters, a vector for stupidity.

It’s easy to forget that modern technology is profoundly procedural. It is a bureaucracy in a box that demands precise conformity with its rules. Those involved with technology are, or at least become, obsessively conservative. Their lives depend entirely on keeping everything exactly the way it is, on following the rules laid out by technology. This, of course, contradicts their self-image as dynamic changers of society. All they really want is a bigger share of the pie. They volunteer as cogs to get it.

None of this is new. Like everything touched by human desire, modern technology has been rationalised as ‘transformative,’ ‘life-enhancing,’ and ‘socially revolutionary.’ It is none of these things. And the folk who spout the gospel of technology aren’t very different from those television preachers who promise immediate and eternal prosperity in return for ten bucks a month. They want your mind in order to get your money. So they fill your mind with nonsense to create an opinion-sphere.

The opinion-sphere operates according to the law of increasing spiritual Entropy. The more opinions posted on blogs, emails, YouTube, and message apps, the greater the spiritual Entropy. Intellect becomes increasingly uniform so that actual communication decreases. Intellectual work, that is to say, thought, is impossible because there is no information differential. What remains is the background radiation of deceitful self-interest, pursued relentlessly... and pointlessly.

Am I mistaken or does Byers read like a 21st century Charles Williams?

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