A List of gods for My Generation: When We Let Gadgets Take Over

Moh Ntinyari
3 min readNov 1, 2017

I would like to submit to you that you and I answer to lesser gods, gods of our own creation.

No one has a battle against technology. It’s a good thing. Most issues then centre around the replacement theory. That we, souls, are begetting mind controllers. And these mind controllers are one click/press/tap at a time changing the very nature of being human.

Listening skills.

One-on-one communication.

Care skills.

Expressing feelings (the emoji challenge).

It seems since the invention of the television, man’s vision for himself has changed. It is a vision for self diminution — less of man’s true existence, and more distractions for him. He is now a distracted force.

I hear it’s been said that the key to self-actualization in the 21st century will be the ability to focus. Jack Ma said that the 3rd revolution carries the ability to reduce man’s ability to think. While the first revolution and second revolutions reduced human effort and distance respectively, the third will give us a reduced mental capability.

The objection could be that man is doing today what he hasn’t been able to do before. The rate of breaking-edge technologies has only increased, but at what cost? Is man’s love for machines dangerous?

If this needs an answer, it can only be obvious. Man’s love for automation isn’t even the real danger — it is his drive towards self extinction.

Isn’t that too far a thought? No, man may as well replace himself. Man will code himself. In a bid to optimise himself, he might as well put himself under the copier. Crazy, right? Yes, but it’s a race to the bottom, and such determination at this rate seems unfettered.

The television started the revolution, the tablet and her sisters, the robot — the screen. And I ask with Abba, tell me what’s the name of the game?

What’s the name of the game?

What’s the name of this race? It’s subtle yet so obvious, that it will not be long before we cannot recognise what we have done. The mask’s thickness will only thicken. We are already hidden behind thick walls, and a thin membrane of plasma display. It soon might be that away from the plasma membrane, real contact will define bourgeois. It’s a corny joke, yet the escalation is just on the hike.

On the other hand, the escalation is now joined by penetration. We seem to be monitoring everything on screens, even our loved ones. It’s astonishing how much we learn from online pages as opposed to real contact. I’m I personally guilty? Yes.

What do we do? What happens next? I do not know quite yet; to the former I answer, we try to defend the remaining walls and build the broken ones. Let’s be restorers of the breach, the builders out of glass ruins — plasma ruins.

We be the ones who draw back, the ones who call it what it is. It’s a race towards losing the being within, muffling him/her and taming the true person.

As if to predict the truth, I came across an article last week about big tech giants who’re raising their kids on almost zero contact with plasma screens. What do they know that we need to heed to? With Abba again, I ask in all honesty.

The experience with screens and their ability to reduce not only productivity, but also quality of self awareness comes across as a transparent experience for many. It doesn’t need a university faculty undertaking research. But if you object, you could be tiny right — the aesthetic value is there, but only in minimal portions. And it cannot be argued with, it requires discipline to disciple one’s television or plasma display intake.

I’ll leave it at, restorers of this breach, builders of the ruined cities (us), securers of the much left (our human touch). It’s as easy as taking stock of our own lives and our interactions with the animated world and deciding what it dictates for us. It’s easier to move forward with actual retrospection than a simple article like this one. You be your own judge.

What gods must you fell?

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