Virtual Utopia and Living Hell - by John Luxton

The zeitgeist event (in the UK) of the last week has to be the arrival of the iPad into our lives. People really seem to believe, maybe correctly, that this device will transform their interaction with the world, a personal window onto a bright, shiny, colourful future. Owning this device guarantees access and is a passport to this world. There is defiantly a totemic aspect to all Apple products, and none more so than the iPad.

The backdrop to its arrival is the startling news that at the factory/city in China where the iPads are built the workers are suiciding. Twelve succeeding, many more attempting. The bosses are reported to be recruiting thousands of therapista and counsellors to restore mental hygiene to the production labs.

Contrast this sad and desperate news to the other images that emerged from China this last week, the opening of the Shanghai Expo.

A few years ago I used to watch the sci-fi TV series Lexx. In which the occupants of a sentient spacecraft/creature were trying to outrun a dark force that was inundating the known universe. This evil cloud was, rather quaintly from today’s perspective was called the Gigashadow. Sometimes I cannot help feeling that there was a degree of prescience in this story line. John Luxton