I’m reading D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Sons And Lovers’ for the first time. I know that it might seem surprising, but it’s amazing how many of the classics can slip through the net. There’s a large enough canon to plough through, so I suppose it’s inevitable many get missed along the way (and no doubt will continue to do so).

In reading the book, I’ve been struck by the brutality of the life of the father character, Walter Morel, especially regarding his job as a miner in a Nottinghamshire pit. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. We have long been aware of the misery and hardship connected to such work. But what registered more powerfully was the reminder of how much this brutalised men, and how, in turn, thanks to alcohol (a desperate attempt at self-medication), they regularly took out their anger, desperation, and frustration, on those around them, particularly their women.

It was one of the worst impacts of an industrialised society, where men in huge numbers were co-opted in the service of machines. A minority of individuals became fantastically rich off these labours, while many might say the advantages industrialisation brought — heat, light, and travel —  immeasurably improved people’s lives. But at a huge cost to humanity, the long term repercussions we are only recognising now as the planet heats up to unsustainable levels.

Still, a fascination with technology continues apace. If anything it’s faster than ever. Each week some announcement is made regarding the latest advancements in automation or AI. Our brains race to assimilate these facts, trying not only to understand the potential uses and practicalities of such wonders, but also the long-term affects. But they are hard to predict, caught up as we are in a fog of ignorance, conspiracy, and paranoia.

All we have to go on is our actual experience of technology and the advantages or disadvantages it brings. That can be seen on a macro level — the various climate disasters now taking place — to the micro — the myriad of irritations that unnerve our daily lives.

From the tyranny of email — a tool that was supposed to make life quicker and easier but instead extends our working hours — to Social Media, a method of communication that has only magnified our feelings of insecurity and mistrust.

The pernicious impact of technology has never been felt more keenly as it was last Saturday afternoon by Liverpool football fans who watched as their team were denied a legitimate goal by a ‘significant human error’ on the part of VAR referees who screwed up the online technology. Two red card decisions were also debatable. None of this would have mattered had Liverpool won the game (unlikely once the team had been reduced to nine players), but with the margins for winning the League so fine, and the millions at stake between fifth and fourth place, such errors can have a huge affect. Worse, they sap energy from the game. If the supporters, already paying inflated prices to attend, are no longer able to trust the judgements they’ve been assured are infallible thanks to VAR, it’s hard to maintain trust. If the evidence of what you are seeing can be challenged or ignored, why care about anything at all?

This Orwellian world where onside is offside, where more time is less time, where connection is loneliness, engenders a sense of destabilisation in us all. 

Bad actors take advantage of this, whether it be Putin spouting his nationalist poison, shutting down all forms of dissent, or Elon Musk allowing Twitter (X) to be invaded in the name of free speech by an army of cranks, propagandists, and liars. Conversation becomes addled by a flood of disinformation, the effort required to distinguish fact from fantasy too exhausting for people. This allows he who shouts loudest and longest to profit — cf. Donald Trump.

Even within the petty politics of the UK, such methods of deception are now being rolled out in readiness for the next General Election. The PM Rishi Sunak decries 15-minute cities and the supposedly harmful affects they’ll have on personal freedoms. Having narrowly held onto Uxbridge and Hillingdon in a recent by-election after stoking unfounded fears about the ULEZ extension, the Govt now sees this world of dis-information as a route to success. To be frank, after thirteen years in power, it’s all they’ve got left.

While all this continues, Chat GPT and Generative AI make further leaps and bounds, eradicating a multitude of tasks once accomplished by dedicated workers. In response to this job eradication, we shrug, unable to understand how we might stop it, believing that if we don’t embrace such technological advances, we’ll be handing the future to people who will.

Perhaps inbuilt into this mechanical tsunami are the roots of its own destruction. Maybe those who adopt it without sufficient consideration will be the first to lose. The revolution will commence amongst societies who have most cruelly disregarded the humanity of their citizens.

Like the men of the early twentieth century, enslaved by Industrialisation and unquestioned promises of progress, a generation of people will be left to rue decisions made, watching the life they knew and understood rapidly dissolve around them.

As of today, it already feels as if something similar is happening on The Kop.

1/10/2023