Post Modern Life?

I have horrors of modern civilization with its dependencies on technology. So a story that feeds my fears mesmerizes me. Here is the ultimate Urban Myth: trapped in an elevator. Well, it happens. And here is the story of a guy who lived that nightmare. He was stuck, helpless, incommunicado for 41 hours not knowing if help would ever come. It's a harrowing tale. It a modern horror story, an Urban Myth that is only too real and not a myth. Read the whole sordid tale as recounted by Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker. If you are a speed reader with not time, here is the gist:

The longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999. White, a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week, working late on a special supplement, had just watched the Braves beat the Mets on a television in the office pantry. Now he wanted a cigarette. He told a colleague he’d be right back and, leaving behind his jacket, headed downstairs. ...

White never went back to work at the magazine. Caught up in media attention (which he shunned but thrilled to), prodded by friends, and perhaps provoked by overly solicitous overtures from McGraw-Hill, White fell under the sway of renown and grievance, and then that of the legal establishment. He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. ... The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.

And if you are illiterate, you can absorb the whole experience by watching the video. Yes, we live in a post-literate age. So sit back and gaze at the drama unfolding. This is what all those little cameras are really designed to achieve, a god's eye view of our suffering.