Breaking Bread
Yesterday I called my mum using Alexa to talk her through making a loaf of bread using the sourdough starter my dad had collected from our doorstep. This, I thought, is truly the embodiment of how technology can bring people together. This is like an advert for Amazon’s devices I mused, imagining a TV commercial with emotive quirky piano music finishing with my dad popping up behind my mum at the end saying its very tasty as I call them after a long walk with my two sons. Part of me thought yes this is everything you rail against. I mean the way in which the consumer Spectacle represents life as a series of symbolic images. But then another part of me felt why should technology be seen as such a corrupting influence when invention and creative problem solving are part of the human experience? Would I care if anyone knew where I was or what my favourite google search was if I wasn’t born into a culture of Big Data duality? By this I mean that Technology has gradually shaped our sense o...