“Being Left Behind: The Discourse of Fear in Technological Change,” from Felicia Wu Song at The Hedgehog Review:
While one would be hard pressed to establish any direct relationship between the popularity of these Rapture narratives and the fear of being technologically left behind in business and global contexts, on several counts it is clear that they do share more than merely their semantic similarities. First, they share a crisis-oriented psychology. In Rapture narratives, the focal point is always the moment of crisis, when family members, neighbors, colleagues, and friends discover that an unexpected cosmic judgment has been made between those who were raptured and those who were left behind. Because these Rapture narratives aim to motivate individuals to prepare themselves to face a cataclysmic moment that determines the eternal fate of their souls, critics point out that these stories often encourage an implicit “theology of crisis, without much patience for peace and ordinary life.” The resulting preoccupation with being prepared for such apocalyptic crisis bears considerable likeness to the motivation underlying the consumption of technology by business executives, government officials, and individuals.