How modern we have become, I have been thinking. You phone GO, or Melita, or whoever, and you get a machine to talk to. If you have ED, press 1, the machine’s voice tells you. If you have angina, press 2. If you are corrupt, like your government, press 3. And on and on it goes.

Having pressed 1, another machine comes in. If you are middle aged, the same voice tells you, press 1, if you are a libertine press 2, if you are old there is no hope.

You are never able to talk to a human, until perhaps you get to the human you want by selecting the number that human belongs to. But it is not certain you will talk to a human. For very often, after pressing a number, maybe your fifth, you may come to the stage where the same voice will give you instructions about what to do. The voice does not bother asking if you have understood. Or if you can do what needs to be done.

It is convenient if the problem is simple. But is anything simple these days?

It is all of course in the interests of the god of mammon. And that god is generous to those who allow these practices - through the power the hoi polloi give through their vote - to go without check.

That machine voice is replacing a human. The voice does not cost anything after it is installed. The human counterpart needs a break for lunch, their leave, needs a toilet where to pee, and a pension. The voice needs nothing, except sometimes a bit of maintenance.

This is where we have got to, because we are modern. I would rather I was living in a simpler age.

 

Roger Mifsud

Rabat