be afraid, be very afraid

So the debate goes like this

We had the scaremongers about the industrial revolution

But we got through that didn’t we!?

So this hollowing out of the middle class

Is nothing to worry about

We’ll all still have things to do

When the jobs of educators are digitally outsourced

Drones can drone and clones can clone

That’s how the argument goes

Holy shitting fuck

We are still stuck on the riff that we are complex machines

Mechanisms – cause and effect

The A grade students

The quiet reasonably hard working ones

Who are good at the secretarial skills

Get bumped up the ladder

Then we go

Ooh oh noo look people are alienated and doing very bad things

Better do a survey

Better collate data

Then process the data and carry on believing in the plan

We’ll all still have things to do

When life is a series of abstract decimalised codes

The cynics can still find time to guffaw

At believers in the ineffable serendipity of love

Yes so you see we got through the industrial revolution

We can get through this hollowing out

We no longer need to have a place for complex stories

We’ll get through this

And emerge and you know what

We’re all in this together.