Ode To Self 3

What do you think, Gentle Reader, of the prevalent use of the article I in our little tech toys and apps: iPhones, iTunes, iPods, iPads, etc. Hey, I just picked up this little answer from Uncle Google: i in iPod stands for some thing personal, like it gives you a Sense that you own it or it make's the iPad, iPod, iMac, etc stand out in the market, How many people do you hear say "I will call them on my iPhone" instead of saying "I will call them on my phone" Apple has very cleverly branded there product name!! (Not my errors in spelling or grammar, by the way!) Hey, wait a minute! Those are small i's, not the big lovely capital I that implies the importance of the person referring to themselves as I. Perhaps this is a subtle importance that they only want you to feel as if you mattered, that you don't really, not to them, anyway, those tech and other corporation monsters that not only sell you product, but in the very act, transform you into product. It doesn't really matter that your significance is just a pretty little illusion. A little i is better than no i at all, right Gentle Reader? Consumerism reduces us to micro-digits of a commodity. We are no longer persons with significance, dignity and intrinsic value. We are stats on a graph, ciphers on a flipchart, coded items on spreadsheet. Coming of age in consumer pop culture could be in some ways almost as dehumanizing as living as slaves or as feudal serfs in Medieval Spain or in the Mexico of the Aztecs. Slaves, by virtue of being purchased and owned, are divested of their presumed humanity, just as the selling and buying of product, by default of being nurtured on any relevant sense of ethic or moral compass reduces us to things, to biologically functioning nonhumans whose raison d'etre is simply to spend money, consume, spend money, consume, keep trying to fill that gaping bottomless chasm that is the human soul without God or ethic, and to really get through life without any developed faculty for critical thinking, nor for really caring for the stranger, the lonely, the destitute, the hungry, or the homeless. Our little tech toys become our identity. They become us, they become our I. Our small i, as they divide and separate us from one another, drawing us ever deeper into the great vortex, that gaping maw of social media, the Web, and illusory connections with illusory persons who are not really present to us at all. This is the triumph of the small i, the mediocre mock-up of a human soul. In the meantime, fixated on our little i's we walk past or step over homeless people and beggars, not even caring to whisper the prayer, "There but for the grace of God go I."