On being enslaved to the systems that are supposed to free you: reflections on a life as a user of smart devices

To make your life easier, you can buy devices now that make everything simple. All you have to do is set them up and make them work. I am in the process of getting set up a device that will run my microwave so that I don't have to punch the buttons. Of course, I still have to go to the kitchen, take the frozen food out of the freezer, put it in the microwave, and open it half way through to remove the plastic cover. The device will not do these things for me. Short of hiring a personal servant, or having an old fashioned mom or spouse who plays that role, unpaid, or for that matter an actual house slave, there is no way yet of fully automating our lives so that we can all have uninterrupted lives of enjoyment free of labor and frustrations. But the aim is that, clearly, for when you call, if you are frustrated at all and they can sense that, they always are very careful to let you know that they understand how you feel and how frustrating that may be. I hear this multiple times every week, often several times in a day. I get the message that I am supposed to be free from all frustrations and hassles, what with all the devices and aids, and the companies are so sorry.

In other words, I am to understand that there is an issue of my convenience and functionality (that of what I use and how I use it, and thus of how “I’ or my life operate, effectively and efficiently or not, and if not, that is a problem, and one that would require reparative attention, directed perhaps at goods or services I must pay for, or at myself as a functional worker at and enjoyer of things, or both), - of my convenience and functionality or frustration and dysfunctionality. It is almost as if it were, at a personal level, an analogue of profitably successful and happy peacetime enterprise or peacekeeping military and police efforts to make my world safe for normal operations again. Business, which is about getting things done for the benefit of use or gain, as war by other means, and all the therapies as the correctional procedures that have long been associated with prisons and now are part of a world where getting work accomplished, managing these tasks, and repairing breaches in the management, are, like policing and war, increasingly indiscernible as internal/external divisions generally tend now to be effaced along with those between work and leisure, duty and enjoyment, if only because duties are given the forms of desires, and tasks those of enjoyments.

For to what may these small matters of a world of machines for home economics be compared? How about companies headquartered in the US or another wealthy nation set up operations in poor countries extracting their mineral resources and employing cheap laborers while setting up markets for our finished products. Arranging all this involves creating poverty and dependency. Then the same companies or others, basically working alongside them, go in to offer peacekeeping military and police forces in the local wars, or food and medications (or maybe food without medications, as they are patented and sold for high profits, and so cannot easily be given out cheaply or freely), perhaps to people herded into refugee camps where they can be given the help they need. And would not have needed if these novel dependencies had not been created. - Or, farmers are impoverished by famines created for the purpose, then driven into cities, where they are employed as factory laborers, and there they are discovered by enlightened and progressive social workers (in America, they were part of the "Progressive" movement a century ago, and the legacy of this is still with), who try to fix their dysfunctional families (sometimes by taking their children away from them to be raised in healthy orphanages), or punish them for alcohol or drug abuse, especially after making the relevant drugs, or alcohol, cigarettes, and caffeinated drinks, all of which create physical dependencies, illegal or problematic somehow, or they treat their supposed mental health problems. Soon we find that almost everyone is in this boat. - Who benefits, cui bono? The result is that companies that direct themselves to such needs make enormous profits, while the masses of people who constitute the available pool of labor power, both employed and the unemployed and under-employment surplus labor power, subject to social controls.

But I get ahead of myself. My problems are relatively manageable; indeed, I suspect they have been instigated largely so that they can be managed, and persons like me render subjects of labor and consumption/debt profit-making power who fundamentally need to be managed, and their lives managed, by others or even themselves.

While it doesn't save me any time or effort, marvel of marvels, the new 'smart' food preparation system will save me having to push the buttons for the time and power level while performing the other physical operations. This would be a greatly needed convenience if I were a quadriplegic who had no hands and arms. I do have hands and arms. It would be very difficult for Amazon or any other company to devise and sell me a device that actually makes it easier to cook something then it would be by pressing the numbers for power level and time. But it is very easy for them to sell me one or several devices, each of which takes an hour or more to set up, and which will save me no time or effort at all when I am cooking something, except that when I get up to put the food in the microwave, and before getting up again to remove the plastic cover, and a third time to remove the cooked food and put it on a plate and grap a fork to eat it with, -- I can speak to the device and say, please cook on power level 10 for 6 minutes, instead of pushing power-10-time-6,00-while getting up to put the food in the microwave.

What is the advantage of all of this? 1) Amazon gets to sell me an electronic device in addition to my just buying a microwave. 2) This system makes me dependent on the device, and on technical support to set it up and every time I have a problem. Note that there will be more, not fewer, problems, that need technical support because there are more, not fewer, devices involved. 3) This dependency and all of the attendant frustration, which is actually augmented along with the time, energy, and money to be spent on it, is marketed as my empowerment and freedom, made possible by having electronic and mechanical devices serve me as if they were my slaves. The routine is I give a command, or communicate my desires or demands, and the system responds accordingly. This is perfectly fitting perhaps for the life of a freelancer or self-employed person, since it is clearly designed to make him or her feel like a boss at least in his home. It’s suggests the contemporary equivalent of the working man who comes home, flops himself into an easy chair, and tells the wife to fetch him a beer.

This is the way our technical device and electronics revolution is working. This goes hand in hand with the need for technical support and customer service phone calls, which are time-consuming, frustrating, and have so far added about 5 hours of unpaid household labor time to my average working week. Fortunately, I am a freelancer and work at home. I pretty much have to be. Ten hours a week are now spent on average in personal business.

The companies do all this efficiently by outsourcing labor. Call central operatives are not very different often from recorded messages; they are quite stupid and more or less require the consumer to be. In all of this, more money is made, from workers who are also consumers, whose effective work week is increased, just as in the old fashioned system of driving to work (think: Los Angeles, several hours of commuting each day) the cost of transporting workers to work sites is borne by the laborer.