I suppose the "more than human" thing is what the machine is selling as an ideal. Whether or not its true doesn't matter.
Apologies if I've been cloth-eared.
I have been thinking about this stuff in the last few weeks as I've just moved to an area of London where the juxtaposition of middle-class comfort and working-class ... can't think of a good word for this... I don't want to say squalor, but it's something like that. Anyway, those two states of life are right up against each other.
This will sound appropriately pathetic, but I went into an Asda the other day (which I'd normally be too snobby to go in) and it all seemed nice, but then I picked up some cookies that were reduced but turned out to be completely stale, and the contactless machine took ages to work (I am ashamed to be typing this) - and it was just a little indication of "oh, when you have this much less to spend your life is just less likely to run as smoothly as I'm used to".
For the last four/five years I've been living in an area of London which is pretty much all middle-class families, very green, insulated in large part against poverty. And I can see that my attitude to politics has been effected by this.
There's also a fascinating repulsion I feel towards poverty - fascinating in that I can see why people erect mental barriers against believing it can really be that bad, or that its worth thinking about that, because its viscerally different to being comfortable, it's not somewhere you want to be.