Passage 3The high-tech world of clocks and schedules, computers and programs was supposed to free us from a life of toil and deprivation, yet with each passing day the human race becomes more enslaved, exploited, and victimized. Millions starve while a few live in splendor. The human race remains divided from itself and severed from the natural world that is its primordial community.We now orchestrate an artificial time world, zipping along the electronic circuits of silicon chips, a time world utterly alien from the time a fruit takes to ripen, or a tide takes to receded. We have sped ourselves out of the time world of nature and into a fabricated time world where experience can only be simulated but no longer savored. Our weekly routines and work lives are punctuated with artificial rhythms, the unholy union of perspective and power. And with each new electric dawn and dusk, we grow further apart from each other, more isolated and alone, more in control and less self-assured. -- From “Time Wars” by Jeremy Rifkin The author’s first paragraph primarily serves to: