Is modernity the death of ritual?
The craftspeople replaced by high precision machines producing the same widget a million at a time all to exactly the same specification.
As a result of mass production the widget becomes meaningless, easily replaced and largely disposable.
What does this do to our culture, when we have no heirlooms, nothing to pass on to future generations, and ultimately nothing to cherish because someone somewhere decided it would be cheaper to do it their way.
You may think I am being nationalistic or overly dramatic, but think about how impersonal has become.
Think back to the watch scene in Pulp Fiction, what do we own anymore that has a story?

I am not free from this habit, I have sold nearly everything I can in order to replace it with the newer, better, adjective here, adjective here, product that occupies its space but does not replace the it. A vacuous cycle of consumerism to fill our own empty lives because we don't have anything to believe in or to look forward to. We are drones on cruise control soaking up banality fast approaching Idiocracy.

Think of CDs. We now have digital media players and online "music stores" where we buy files. Files, some obscure object without a tactile interface and nothing to engage with. No album art to whet your palette prior to the audio adventure. Just an icon provided by your GUI. Double click and listen through some chinsy ear buds that poorly reproduce the sounds the musician(s) had work to make near perfect.

Where are we going?
Where does it end?
The soul is not in the machine, just ask John Henry.

What do we own or know that is not disposable?
Our friends have now become a collection pixel arranged like a merit badge on a website that has no purpose otherwise

What is the meaning of all this?

"And nothing of value was lost"?