A bleak view of our future, this panel presages a future in which we are unable to act without input from an electronic device. It does not matter whether we have the ability to recognize the need to act or even whether we have the free will to act. We will be incapable of acting without a literal jolt of electricity.
As such, this is a cautionary tale.
Get rid of your PDA, your PC, your TV, and your alarm clock, the panel is telling us. Return to a simple life in which you had to wash your dishes before putting them into the dishwasher, in which a 13-inch TV was not capable of putting out deafening sound, and in which the arrival of an actual physical mailman with actual physical mail was a highlight of the day.
Repent and forsake your electronic graven images, the panel warns. Otherwise all you have to look forward to is a future in which, without a signal from our appliance overlords, we will be incapable of rousing ourselves to action.
Though, on the plus side, a whole new world of excuses for tardiness will be open to us.
My PC told me to mention these marginalia:
- What the hell is scribbled on the right-hand post-it note? Honestly, what is the point of writing that illegibly?
- "And if I die before I wake..." Since this references Burl, it is the reader's happy thought for the day.
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