As we’re all just slaves of the Neoliberal Empire these days, the warring competitors don’t give too much of an airborne shag who gets hurt (or made homeless) in the crossfire. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Web.
The global civil war taking place between search engines at the minute has recently produced a dizzying number toolbars flashing unexpectedly onto my Firefox Home page. The difference between the pyromanic Fox and most suppliers (it being there for us rather than the shareholders) is that its advice on how to get rid of the travelling salesmen is second to none. But every week, the Bings and Yahoos update their illegal entry software, and gradually, over time, one senses that Firefox is losing the battle.
When not trying to stay neutral in Search Wars, I am assailed by a regiment of liars telling me Your Computer is at Risk! It very probably is, but nothing these molluscs could provide me with would help. The irony is that we now need anti-mal software to screen out the jerks selling the security software.
In my gmail inbox, each day there are folks asking how dare I break up with them, did I get their last email, and otherwise asserting that they have a proposition, a sob-story, a deal, a concept, a longer dick, a conundrum, or a prize for me. All over the world, poor (in every sense) bastards are bashing out this crap, 99.3% at least of which is destined for the spam box, then the recycling bin, and then….well, the community recycling dump – as a tiny synapse of memory on a crushed and rusting hard disk somewhere. Eventually, even the virtual must die a physical death. (The collapse of ‘the Cloud’ as a stock market sector during the last fortnight has been a reflection of that.)
The Upside Down nature of our contemporary world will, I’m sure, one day be the subject of an entire history genre. The titles of future electronic books will include attention-grabbers like Cannon Fodder, Raping the Neutrals, When the World Dozed Off, and How Could They Not Notice an Anal Invasion?
The one time I witnessed such backwards-looking blame in the real world was when I went to what was then West Berlin….nearly fifty years ago in 1965. A new generation of Germans was growing up after the War, and having spent three months with them on a campsite in the south-western suburb of Glienicker, I took back to England the harsh lesson of what happens after the previous generation has enjoyed a very long and self-pitying cannibalistic lunch. Such culturally unthinking indulgence inevitably leads to a Dark Night of debauchery…but it’s only later that those who weren’t there ask, in a condemnatory manner, “WTF were you playing at?”
It’s all very well to ask that, but those teenage Germans I met are now running a country repeating the mistakes of its grandparents. I’d love to think that the next future will be low in sanctimony, and high in testimony. But I have my doubts.
The lesson we need to learn here is a very simple one: human hubris aspires to things that will be perfect, and last forever. But overwhelming evidence from every scientific and metaphysical discipline demonstrates that this is an illusion. Every search for Utopia ends in Dystopia. Eyes-wide-open observation is good, blind belief is bad.
All things must pass. Everything is in transition. Nothing lasts forever.
The Slog 