So, too, with alienation. Marx was talking about physical commodities — the guys who work in the widget factories can’t afford the widgets they make. Indeed, they never even see the finished widget as it rolls off the line — they are just a small cog in a big machine. But alienation is so much more profound than that, and more pervasive. Again, consider the laptop class. What are they connected to, other than their tiny social media bubbles? They have no real relationship even to their own physical body — just look at them, for pete’s sake. They’ve never done anything with their hands but type. And as for social relations, they’re so disconnected from other people that they will text people who are in the same room.
No shit, I’ve seen it happen. And it’s even worse than that, because they think they’re being socially savvy. “Oh, Jayden is in the middle of a conversation with Brayden; I’ll just text him, so as not to interrupt.” But since people under forty are physically incapable of not checking their phone the minute it beeps at them, it’s not just an interruption, it’s an especially obnoxious one … and they have no idea. What we used to call the “soft skills” — the ability to come up to Jayden and Brayden, assess where the conversation’s going, and steer it in such a way as to get Jayden the info he needs organically — are totally gone.
You can test this for yourself. Just don’t answer the phone. Or a text. Seriously, try it. It’s tough, isn’t it? No matter where you are, the fucking thing dings, and you immediately grab for it. It takes real physical effort not to. It’s much, much easier to simply turn it off, and while I’m all for that — indeed, I’m for dropping it overboard in the Marianas Trench, or shooting it into deep space — try leaving it on, and only checking your text messages at a set time. It’ll keep until 3pm (your designated “check message” time), I promise. Or if it won’t — if it’s the wife asking you to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home — then you’ll learn a different lesson, the one about how we use crutches for some reason when we’ve got perfectly good legs.
That’s alienation, in the broadest and most significant sense. Since you are constantly available — since your time is now a commodity, that you’re constantly selling to the lowest bidder — your personal worth is zilch. You’re a message-answerer and milk-fetcher and all-purpose Guy Friday, to everyone, all the time. Even to — make that especially to — the people who supposedly love you, and respect you. Because who cares what you’re doing right now? The important thing is that milk, no?
Severian, “On Losing the Cold War”, Founding Questions, 2022-07-02.
May 14, 2026
QotD: Marx was right about “alienation”
Filed under: Media, Quotations, Technology — Tags: KarlMarx, Psychology, Severian, Smartphones, SocialMedia — Nicholas @ 01:00
