The over-complexity of modern life

Here’s one example (among a zillion) of what I mean:

If you’re using a PC-based computer of some kind, of course it’s good to know about the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keyboard shortcut. If the computer hangs or seems to for no particular reason start slowing down, you can hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete to see “what’s going on behind the scenes.” Like, there may be a particular program running “in the background” that’s semi-stuck (taking a short power-nap?) and is bogging down everything.

Good luck finding it, though. Ctrl-Alt-Delete brings up a special systems screen where you can invoke the “Task Manager.” There you’ll see seven tabs:
. Processes
. Performance
. App history
. Startup
. Users
. Details
. Services

When pressed, the tabs each show a zillion things that are happenin’ right now on your machine, with associated statistics.

Do it and see. Your tiny marvel is a little world unto itself. A world of enormous, unbelievable complexity. A tempest in a teapot. And so it goes for the zillion-plus-one devices and appliances and instruments and apparatuses and mechanisms and gadgets that surround us, that we confront in awe and trepidation within the hyper-modern Technosphere.

The devices are intelligent. They know what they’re doing. They’re insidious. They lure with the sense of “additional convenience” that they each, individually, promise. But, above the Cloud, what the tech demon-gods know is that us modern humans are becoming increasingly spiritually impoverished in direct proportion to the growing mechanization, automation, and industrialization they have foisted — in an ultra-Faustian bargain.