The Supermarket Trolley

The Ancients say it extended from the hand, morphed into a basket and leaped on to some wheels. Each step seemed like autonomy from god yet ...

The Ancients say it extended from the hand, morphed into a basket and leaped on to some wheels. Each step seemed like autonomy from god yet it was always in god's service. 

That's one way to look at it.

Another view; Sure, the trolley accepts its nature, always to be god's hand but if we map out its shape, its shifting form, there's a progression towards independence.

Another view; By becoming mobile there's an effort to reflect our own mobility, to mimic us. 

Cyborg Trolley (source)

It wants to be us but this is as simple and cheap a solution as we give it. If we lived on water perhaps we'd have an elegant solution, a floating wicker basket to hold Moses along the river reeds. But plastic bottles rafting a wheelie bin would be more likely. 

This is not a story of us and them, technology verus people. In the same way as Science is mistaken as a singular all agreeing collective, the Us (the god earthlings) are built of many groups. Which one of us the trolley serves is clarified at the border line.

"Please note trolley will stop beyond this point"
Trolley disabled at the border line (source)



"...the logic of identity is, always and everywhere, entangled in the logic of hierarchy." - David Graeber, The First 5000 Years of Debt


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