Discourse on technology - from ‘A Woman in Berlin’.

Sunday 22 April, 1945 2am

“The walls are marked by chalk, by now smeared and running, evidently directing the soldiers to specific assembly points. Two cardboard placards are tacked onto the maple tree across the street, announcements neatly penned by hand. in blue and red letters, with the names ‘Hitler’ and ‘Goebbels’ on them. One warns against surrender and threatens hanging and shooting. The other, addressed ‘To the People of Berlin’, warns against seditious foreigners and calls on all men to fight. Nobody pays any attention. The handwriting looks pathetic and inconsequential, like something whispered.

“Yes, we’ve been spoiled by technology. We can’t accept doing without loudspeakers or rotary presses. Handwritten placards and whispered proclamations just don’t carry the same weight. Technology has devalued the impact of our own speech and writing. In the old days one man’s call to arms was enough to set off an uprising - a few hand-printed leaflets, ninety-five theses nailed to a church door in Wittenberg. But today we need more, we need bigger and better, wider repercussions, mass produced by machines and multiplied exponentially. A woman reading the placards summed it up nicely; ‘Well just look at what those two have come to’. “