Status Updates From Childhood's End

It’s interesting. It moves too fast for a standards novel, but I’m still intrigued. It’s much more movement than flowery language.

Was it possible that despite all their enormous intelligence the Overlords did not really understand mankind, and were making a terrible mistake from the best of motives? Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?

“Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours per day? Soon people won’t be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various serials on TV!”

As written 60 years before “keeping up with the Kardashians”. And we don’t even have Overlords to blame our passivity on. Only an internal doom.

“The world’s now placid, featureless, and culturally dead: nothing really new has been created since the Overlords came. The reason’s obvious. There’s nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments…No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges-absorbing but never creating.”