Dear reader,
Good afternoon :), what is always switched on, electric and lights up in the dark?
New York? Your television? No you silly muffin. It's my love for YOU :D.
When I was a boy I wanted the latest gadgets. In my case it was the latest video consoles and gaming experience. I loved games and my friends did too. I would get endless fun from going to their houses every weekend to conquer the next boss, or fight the aliens with the big guns. Even if the enjoyment had come from a screen omitting light, it was still enjoyment and it was still fun. Funny enough I was given plastic animals to play with while my friends played on their Sega Saturn. Can I complain? :) Of course not, because Mr Green T-rex and the evil Lion were awesome and I guess my crazy imagination came from those days of creating out of thin air. Thank you mama and papa.
I eventually grew out of video games, not because they were under me. Simply because I am now in a point in my life where I realize real happiness comes from what people generate rather than that what they are stimulated by. Which has us arrive at today's blog topic: how technology influences our everyday existence and the dangers of it as we head into the age of the cyber: the electric world.
I was late to many technological things. I feel that as a society we all go through cyber trends pushed forward by the advertising corporations and consequently spread through word of mouth, friends and used in science fiction movies, endorsed by celebrities and idols alike. Technology is just as trending as fashion, or sport. In this new age technology now defines us. Yet I felt, as I am sure many other people do, that it was almost baby fed to us by the major corporations. It was baby fed to us as a novelty rather than an invention that could be used to help our daily existence. Yes reader, while you may list the thousands of useful things an Ipad can do for you, I ultimately feel that the novelty of having an Ipad outweighs your use for it. We just feel great owning the latest device, because that somehow makes us feel... like the latest device.
The sad thing is that as soon as they release another model you might look down to your own and not feel very impressed any more. This leads you then to update it until the cycle starts again. This comes back to happiness coming from generating, not by being stimulated and unfortunately for most people, they are so enticed with their technology tools, stimulation is everything to them. People are forgetting how to create with their bare hands and so consequently technology has made us creatively redundant. Children don't play with sticks in the garden anymore to let their mind wander and create a sword, instead they let the game do that for them. They let the game provide their source of imagination. Everything is to be expected to happen in a blink of an eye like fast broadband. A thing that manually needs to be pressed instead of touch screen is a liability, and a phone that cannot take photos, videos, navigate you back to your car and browse the internet at the same time, is not a phone at all.
Do you see my point? I have seen it with my own eyes. A couple sitting on the train enjoying each other's company by looking down at their smart phones. A family in the living room with one person on a laptop, the other on an ipad, the other browsing the phone, and the television on at the same time at full blast while a cat wanders aimlessly, wondering what it's master's obsession was with the screens and the glowing light. Technology distracts us so much from reality, we believe that our world really is electric and slowly but surely begin to accept this false truth that the world is not mountains, oceans and skies but pictures of mountains, oceans and skies taken on a camera, published on Facebook.
As grumpy as this may sound reader :), I am not preaching that all technology should be burnt to the ground. I am simply saying that never lose track of what is controlling what. Is the Ipad in your hands using you, or are you using the Ipad? There are plenty of creative apps with the Ipad as an example, there are many ways to communicate and collaborate with people using it as a genuinely useful device. Yet there are also many apps and games that will draw you in and keep you there. Video games these days are not games but military training exercises, training boys how to get head shots at a long range, or drive tanks or fly helicopters. It is so common we have father's buying their 7 year old sons games with blood and gore and the more that time passes the more realistic and therefore more powerful the effects are on the child. This is to the point that killing and death is encrypted into the minds of so many teenage boys that I suppose if a third world war started there would be little distinguishing them from playing a video game and killing cyber bad guys than from real human beings.
There is something really wrong with it all, don't you think? Haha, and not to get even more emo on you, but please notice the progression of technology. First we had manual button phones, now we have touch screen where our fingers connect with the phone physically, and now on the horizon soon to be released next year is cyber technology where we will be literally connected, wearing our smart phone like glasses with a glass that covers our eye. Welcome to Google Glass, which is the future :).
Trans-humanism is the term that society is now embracing. It is the inevitable rise of humanity to a cyber form where technology is so integrated into our lives that we will literally accept it as part of our physical self. I have told you that we believe that the world is an electric world, and now the people living in it will walk as electric people.
:D Just remember for me, as we walk inevitably into this new age, spend your money on things that bring out value in yourself that will allow you to create, generate and produce. Gadgets are tools to achieve these things, not replacements.
Have a great day :), I'll write to you real soon.
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