The SNJ’s new columnist Karen Eberhardt-Shelton was born in California but grew up in England.

She now lives in Stroud and is currently working on an education project called Learn, Think, Act and is hoping to develop an eco-community land trust.

Her thought-provoking columns will focus on how we all have to take responsibility for our actions and for our planet.

I WONDER how others view the quality, framework and pigment of this era.

If you’re old enough, it might be possible to compare one time zone with another.

If, when you were a child, vocal cords held sway for a maturing adult, it might appear that you’ve moved to a different planet.

That’s how I’m finding it.

As the format of digital technology progresses, I feel more and more alienated from real life: the actual ticking of a clock, the unrehearsed vocal swagger of a cockerel, a croaking bullfrog by a pond...

Nearly anything to do with business, bureaucracy or an account of some kind involves a robot (or a robot disguised as an employee).

And sneakiness too – certain numbers don’t fit my BT package, so I have to pay extra. Who does the payment go to?

Whatever company it is you’re calling.

I hate ringing a bank, the headquarters of something or other, any form of officialdom, even when it’s local.

You have to listen to recordings – press 1, 2, 3 or 4, tune in to another department, and press 1, 2, 3 or 4 again.

“Your call may be monitored...” for whatever dumb reason.

Then you get someone with a real voice who is maybe 20, working for a minimum wage, and so inexperienced with real life, you might as well be talking to a young hedgehog. Or possibly a lamb.

Nobody has any concern for issues or what actually sent you to the phone.

You just have to say things that tick the little boxes they’re familiar with and that’s the only feedback they can offer.

Answers to obvious questions aren’t available.

It’s all done by the book and according to whatever department you have a need to contact.

Impersonal detachment is embedded in the entire mechanised plastic system.

I could gurgle that my neck had just been cut in half and still be asked how I want to pay, which department I want to reach... You know what? It’s going to worsen.

As the population increases, there are more and more lemmings running around, and they can’t possibly identify each other.

I used to go out and play with Ronnie, Kay and Little Linda.

We knew each other, recognized each other’s voices, were plugged in to each other’s basic family scenarios.

When the phone rang and there was no answer, that meant we weren’t home.

We wrote letters by hand, put glass milk bottles out to be picked up, and didn’t have to deal with plastic waste.

Real life. That’s what I’m saying.

Being there, being yourself, relying on your own voice and the voices of others.

But somewhere along the way, a big technical script got written.

Automated this, digital that, technology with a vicious appetite.

We’re present as individuals with minds of our own only when we go off-line, and put the mobile phone in a drawer.

Move to a remote piece of countryside and disconnect?

Not even much chance of that anymore. We’re so programmed to think electronically/digitally, we’d die of technical starvation. In my view, it’s awful – anti-life, deafeningly impersonal, rigid, humourless, and a spooky precursor of even worse to come.

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