or How Automated Time Changes Give Me Sci-Fi Dystopian Tingles
The ongoing techno-capitalist enclosure of our imaginations is happening every day. But sometimes it takes something as seemingly innocuous as the time change to make you write about it…
Daylight savings time. Spring forward. Fall back. A seasonal ritual easily adapted into daily life. But as the computer age made the process more automated it has always felt a little claustrophobic. The invisible forces that are revealed. So convenient. What’s not to like? But it’s a fine line between convenience and control. Which is why I wrote this poem to explore the theme.
An Age of Exquisitely Rational Cannibals or How Automated Time Changes Give Me Sci-Fi Dystopian Tingles
i. seamlessness can be quite unseemly
Something about the time change
Triggers a little creepy sci-fi tingle in me
Automatic update
An unseemly seamlessness
My body tells me one time
But my phone tells me I’m wrong
ii. the clock of the world
Grace Lee Boggs (#RestInPower) taught us to ask
“What time is it on the clock of the world?”
US fascism is an hour hand in search of the minutes
Weaponizing blatant lies
So the leader of the failed 2021 coup, can return to power
What can you call it other than “reality war?”
The sci-fi tingle feels more ominous
iii. the fine line between convenience and control
Centralized “updates” of anything
Invoke the specter of growing technofascism
Sure, auto time change is no big deal
But it suggests the simple manipulations
The ways our shared reality can already be shaped
With centralized technological power
As proprietary algorithms conquer more of daily life
The fine line between convenience and control
Gets blurred
Dangerously blurred
whir-churn-ping(!)
Behind every new “convenience” is a giant corporation
A giant profit extracting machine
Busy selling outwards, sucking upwards
Busy amassing unprecedented power
And fascism, as defined by Mussolini himself
is really just “a merger of state and corporate power”
I’m not against convenience. But I’m not automatically for it either
Privileged zip codes and income brackets
Live in an age of consumer miracles
Delivered in 30 minutes or less
whir-churn-ping(!)
iv. please refrain from asking questions about all the “progress”
But at what cost?
Hefty price tags for that new iphone
But that’s only what they charged us
Please ignore the poisoned lands
Please ignore the exploited workers
Please ignore the creation of unimaginably wealthy oligarchs
Please ignore them buying our media and politicians
[Please refrain from asking questions about all the “progress”]
v. insatiable enclosures
Capitalism is built upon enclosure
The enclosure of land,
The enclosure of labor
The enclosure of nature (what they like to call “natural resources”)
But now their infinite growth machine is hitting the planet’s biophysical limits
And it’s turning its insatiable appetite back on those it claimed to serve
The historic momentum of enclosure continues
Optimizing to help us consume ourselves
So we find ourselves in an age of exquisitely rational cannibals
Enclosing our social relationships
Enclosing our desires
Enclosing our imaginations
vi. we the commodity
An economy of attention
Auctioned off to the highest bidders
“We the people,” became “We the consumers”
And now we’re rapidly becoming “We the commodity”
Now everybody knows: the product is us
whir-churn-ping(!)
So sure, time change auto-updates are NO big deal
But I hope maybe they’ll make you feel a little creepy sci-fi tingle too
And maybe that little tingle can help us remember to ask
Who’s building our future?
And do I get a say in it?
Now go enjoy that “extra” hour of daylight 😉