The Willing Slave

I recently overheard a woman say at a party ‘I’ve become a slave to my Aga’. I wondered why anyone would give up their freedom of choice to a machine, but this got me considering the modern world we live in.

It is too easy to become a ‘slave’ to your TV, car, mobile phone, computer, Sat Nav or any other technology, if you choose to. My car continually nags me to give it a service, put my seat belt on, etc. Several people have followed their Sat Nav to the village of Maiden Newton, when our address is Stratton, despite my warning them of this common error. The response is ‘it told me to go there’.

It is reported that some children are now so addicted to their phones that they imagine it is ringing, even when it’s not. What problems are we creating for future generations?

Many years ago, people had no choice about becoming slaves and were captured by slave masters. Are we becoming our own technology slave masters?

As human’s, we have that freedom of choice between stimulus and response. I believe it would be a great shame if we gave that up, especially to a silicon chip.

“Anyone who by his nature is not his own man, but is another’s, is by nature a slave”  Aristotle (384-322 BC)