No, this really isn’t an anti-technology blog. Quite the opposite. It is a blog focusing on the question of what drives technological advances and what purpose their implementation is really for.

Is all the technology that we already have, that we are being offered and that we are being promised: Making life easy? Making life reliable? Making life cheap?

The chances are that once you have stopped to think about it, your answer will be at least one of these, but probably all three.

But tech is easy, reliable and cheap for who exactly; is this really about the end result for you?

If we look subjectively at all the technological development there has ever been, right since the industrial age began, the general consensus would likely be that the rise of tech has only ever been good for us. That no part of it could possibly represent anything bad.

With the arrival of the internet and the smart technology age, as we dip our toes further and further towards a waterfall of AI, it really does seem that everything in life couldn’t be progressing faster or improving at an increasing or exponential pace.

But as the ease with which a fully-tech-orientated life seems to be taking shape, the upcoming generations are no longer fully familiar – if indeed familiar at all, with the process of traditional learning and remembering information and processes of thinking that will equip them in dealing with the future experiences that they cannot yet see. And why would they, when a search engine linked to their smart watch or phone, can instantly do it all for them instead?

This rate of so-called progress is coming at a massive price. It’s not just the dangerous lie that knowledge is the same thing as experience that is breaking the fabric of society and our humanity apart.

It is both the dependency and preference that we have for a tech-takeover of our lives in every sense that is supercharging the process of us all forgetting and proactively leaving behind the people, the individuals and the human beings that we really are.

We are told and conditioned to believe that technological advances have created an age where it is no longer possible for humanity to go backwards in any way. Why would we question this when every stream of accepted information or media narratives tell us that the flow and breadth of Information, pharmaceuticals, digital money and foods that even 100 years ago could never have been dreamed of, really do make us all, the unwitting participants in a game where we are actively being led to think and believe that we are all the new gods.

The technology that we already have is great, and it is mind boggling to visualise what is yet to come. But have you noticed how someone who we would probably only ever catch a glimpse of on social media or TV is always doing well out of it, whilst somewhere, someone and indeed many others are suffering as a result – usually in growing numbers and well outside of the media view.

Whether it’s the people who are no longer needed for the jobs that they were trained for relying on food banks or the billionaire tech moguls being able to declare that their latest inventions will mean nobody will really have to work again, technological development is being used as the tool of money-obsessed-age.

Technology and technological advances are not being used as the tools to improve and enhance life and humanity in the ways that each and every one of them genuinely could, in the right hands.

The uses for technology today and how we could be using them look very much the same. But man cannot have two masters.

For as long as tech development is driven by profit, the humanity and freedoms we so believe in are being sent back to the stone age at a like-for-like increasing pace.

The metaverse and the world of virtual reality may not have taken off in the ways that it has the potential to do so yet. But as we have seen with the drug-like hypnotic ability that computer and video games have on different people, we must surely be very close to turning point where people can step into a pretend world where they never again have to leave.

Again, the question must be asked, ‘What is this really all for?’ ‘Who really benefits from the general population losing touch with everything that matters?’

A growing population that has the resources and information available for everyone to think freely in a way that history has never allowed normal people to do so before is a problem for the people who abuse the power and responsibility they have gained at the top.

Like lambs to the slaughter, we willingly embrace the march of tech as it preaches the message that we are one step closer to a quality of life that we can’t even begin to imagine, each and every day.

We ignore the loss of jobs, the redundancy of our skills and talents. We are blinded to the dependency we are all building upon machines and processes that the wiping of history through the whims of the strangely all-powerful woke will quickly leave even the most educated of our younger generations unable to understand.

The nightmare story of life within a dystopia that we ridiculously still believe is restricted to the pages of great works such as 1984 is already unfolding around us all. But instead of rejecting it, we are embracing it like we are all the lead in some modern day parody of Oliver Twist, where we are falling over ourselves with the begging bowl and crying out for even more.

Tech would be even more beneficial and helpful to us all, if its overriding purpose were to improve life and its use were to be restricted by principles such as choosing restraint and consideration over its use, rather than the default setting today, which is always to do use it, not because it is morally right and healthy for everyone to do so, but simply because its profitable for someone, and they can.

It is both sad and very regrettable that technological advances have become yet another tool where those who already possess so much, are effectively unopposed by anything as they impose even more restrictions and choking controls on life and our ability to flourish, just so they can have even more of the power, money and influence that they will never use as they could and really should.

The harsh and uncomfortable truth is that none of those who are bought into and fuelling this specific kind of technical age and motivated this way will ever say, is that without care for humanity and what the basic tenets of life are and should always be about, the few can only become smaller in number.

Whilst the power, wealth, influence and control of the few continues to grow, all others will become the soulless slaves and bodies, drugged by a technologically engineered experience where they believe they have everything, but actually have nothing. All under the auspices of a repressive system harnessing tech for all the bad reasons we can imagine.

This is nothing less than a process of enslavement by tech. Not imposed on us voluntarily, but voluntarily imposed.

We are all playing a part in allowing this to happen. But the alternative needn’t look or feel like the rejection of tech in any way.

The freedom of us all hinges upon our readopting and repurposing tech for uses that are genuinely useful and important, so that it is used to benefit the many, rather than coming at cost to the many in ways that will only ever truly benefit the few.

In my last blog written towards the end of last week, I was making light of the reality that with my elderly Mum passing away on Christmas Eve, the anniversary of my Dad’s passing on 12^th Night had effectively meant the two of them had managed to sandwich the whole of the Christmas period inbetween.

Sat at the bar, in The Old Elm, Churchdown, as I was, I found myself talking to a local man I had seen out with his lovely chocolate Labrador. We didn’t talk for long, but in the time that we did, he mentioned that he was a volunteer at the local food bank, which is housed on Cheltenham Road East, at GL3.

Despite visiting Tesco pretty much every day since it opened about 8 years ago, and using the great Barber’s van that parks right outside the Hub every week, the fact that there is a Food Bank based there had completely passed me by.

I was more than a little disappointed, as I had donated a very large amount of in-date items that I had only cleared as I was sorting through my Mum’s things to what I thought was the closest Food Bank in Cheltenham – on that same day!

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which Food Bank donations go to. But as there is such an extraordinary and growing need for this kind of support – from not just those who we might expect, but from people we really might not think need to ask or go in search for help of this kind – it does of course make sense that any help that we can give should go to our local community and the people who are in need, who we might be passing in the local street each and every day.

You don’t need to be homeless, out of work, without a car, a phone or many other things to be going hungry – no matter what too many of our politicians or other out-of-touch people who have a public platform might so patronisingly declare.

What makes the unfolding tragedy of the cost-of-living-crisis even worse, is the way The System works, where people in positions of authority have made it so, that ongoing help of this kind requires those in need to create a very big official flag telling the world who they are.

Yes, there has to be a way to prevent fraud and abuse of charity and giving. But many people who need help are thinking twice, because of the problems that the knock-on effects of telling the world that they are struggling – for whatever the reason might be – will cause.

I’ve written about ‘Hungry No More’ – serving the people who share the area I live in today who need real help, because whether we need that help ourselves or are able to give it, every local Food Bank needs to be known by us all, for however long a need for them should regrettably remain.

If you are in Churchdown, Innsworth, Longelevens or Longford, or the wider Cheltenham and Gloucester areas and have the ability to help or even spread the word too, Hungry No More are looking for donations that in particular include:

• Long Life Milk
• Squash
• Tinned Vegetables
• Tinned Tomatoes/Passata
• Dried Pasta
• Noodles
• Jars of Pasta/Bake Sauce
• Pasta & Sauce Packets
• Tinned Meals
• Tinned Meat
• Soups
• Tinned Fruit
• Tinned Deserts
• Washing Powder
• Cleaning Products

We are all experiencing an uncertain world and might be surprised by how just easy things could change and for us all to find ourselves needing the help of people who aren’t really strangers, even for just a short time.

Please help Hungry No More if you can. Or if you are reading this from further away, please find or get online and search for your Local Food Bank, or check out orgainsations like The Trussell Trust.

Hungry No More can be contacted by phone on 07824 043895 or by e-mail at innsworthhungrynomore@yahoo.com The address is GL3 Hub, Cheltenham Road East – and they are opposite the Churchdown Tesco.

Thank you everyone – and especially all the local volunteers who are giving so much of their time.