Submit

Do you ever feel a twinge of regret before you click on that button at the bottom a web form that says “Submit”?

When I tap on it, I feel as if I am finalizing my submission to a machine. “Submit,” it says, “Give up your agency, and you will be rewarded.”

We are all slaves of the machine now

How much of your labor is dedicated to doing what machines have asked you to do?

How much of your time is spent on maintaining your car, your PC, your phone?

Are you obsessed with improving your productivity? Take a minute to catalogue your favorite productivity habits. How many of them consist of managing your email, your text messages, and all the rest of the noise created by the tech tools you use every day?

Would you go on vacation somewhere without Wi-Fi? Who’s in charge, you or the internet connection?

Have you ever lost a day to a technological glitch? Lost access to files? Lost access to email? Hard drive crash? Power failure? When they happen, you spend huge chunks of time exclusively dedicated to getting the machines back up. Are they serving you, or are you serving them?

Are you really good at scanning bar codes at self-checkout? Congratulations, you’re a true expert at working under the eye of a machine.

Will you change?

Traditionally, this is the part of the post where I would tell you to change. I won’t. Because you won’t. We are slaves to the machine because we depend on it. We’re codependent. It’s too hard to stop.

But I do want you to think about this for a moment.

When your time is sucked away serving a machine, ask, is this worth it? What would happen if, just this once, I didn’t spend my time on this?

Pick up a pen.

Go for a walk.

Hug your children.

Spend a little time on something other than serving the machine.

Don’t worry. I’m not telling you to give up your servitude. Just take a break once in a while.

And then, when you’re done and feeling refreshed.

Submit.