#Transportation

Uber is the ritual of rubbing a smartphone like a magic lamp, summoning someone else’s car and leaving a subtle ache in both the city’s traffic and your wallet. With one tap, your journey begins, only to face the trial of surge pricing minutes later. Upon completion, you are forced to rate both the driver and the algorithm, elevating the passenger into both manager and managed. Convenience always hides the whim of price, binding you with a curse that forever erases the option of walking. Today, someone once again taps the button, upholding this invisible, pyramid-shaped social hierarchy of mobility.

Walking is the most primitive and ecological means of locomotion, employing only the two feet of its practitioner to conquer terrain at the mercy of gravity and willpower. Humanity, obsessed with convenience, periodically engages in this ordeal only to be reminded of the paradox between health and civilization. With no pedals or engines, the endless march may be seen as either resistance to consumer society or an act of self-sadism. Should one cease, the conveniences of modern life immediately bare their teeth, compelling us to keep treading as if building castles on sand.