Alienation
The stupefying effects of the digital age....a lost generation sleep walks into the future, their zombie brains remotely controlled by electronic gadgets.
The 20th century existentialists bemoaned the dehumanizing influence of our accelerating technology- overly processed food rots our bodies, while TV melted our brains. In stepped the personal computer and its evil cousin, the cell phone. Kids run their mouths all day, they text message all night...and never manage to say anything. A false rhythm prevails...
Everything has been reversed- the classroom is 'downtime' time spent away from their silly machines....Before,, the classroom was the most active moment of the day, exploration hour.
Online shopping...automated banking...prepaid toll booths...these remove the other human from the equation. The individual is faced with buttons, the individual is alone.
Most people under the age of 35 do not even read the newspapers, on or off line. They get their current events from late night comedians and a certain comedy channel program that imitates news broadcasting...yet these comics are empty suits- during a recent writers strike, they went off the air, because the front men for these shows don't have any of their own jokes-there isn't much inside their collective heads.
The under 35 set thinks in terms of sound bites.
They can email, text message and yap on their cell phones till the radiation starts to eat their grey matter, but it is all futility. These people cant change a flat tire, walk in the deep woods by them selves all day, or read anything serious that is more than 400 pages long. 'History' has been abbreviated... 'Skills' have become confused with knowledge...The GPS has eliminated instincts for direction...spell check obliterates the need to know how to spell. we have become tools of our tools, our natural humanity atrophies. The question isn't whether machines think, but does Man?
Science is no longer in the hands of gentlemen scientists; mega corporations and government control research.
'Government' has never been 'cool' ... 'big business' has never been 'cool'...why embrace politicians who are owned by big money?
The music young people listen too is beyond awful-most of it sucks. Although not a direct result of the Internet age, a collapsing aesthetic goes hand in hand with a rampaging technology. A creeping philistinism accompanies the march of our homogenized society. Devo was right.
All the polling and studies suggest that people were much happier 40-50 years ago, before the gadget takeover. More people are loners today than ever before- they are electronically in touch with the world wide web, yet they are forced to eat big Pharma's poisonous pills just to cope with their cybernetic and social hell.
How many trees have to be cut down to satisfy our need for speed? How many tigers are slaughtered to sustain our technological advance? There are only 6,000 left...Do you want to live in a world without tigers?
The original challenge of modernity- how to humanize technology- remains unmet.
"Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men" (Theodore Adorno)
"Technology is the knack for so arranging the world that we dont have to experience it" ( Max Frisch)
"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours" (President John F. Kennedy)
The 20th century existentialists bemoaned the dehumanizing influence of our accelerating technology- overly processed food rots our bodies, while TV melted our brains. In stepped the personal computer and its evil cousin, the cell phone. Kids run their mouths all day, they text message all night...and never manage to say anything. A false rhythm prevails...
Everything has been reversed- the classroom is 'downtime' time spent away from their silly machines....Before,, the classroom was the most active moment of the day, exploration hour.
Online shopping...automated banking...prepaid toll booths...these remove the other human from the equation. The individual is faced with buttons, the individual is alone.
Most people under the age of 35 do not even read the newspapers, on or off line. They get their current events from late night comedians and a certain comedy channel program that imitates news broadcasting...yet these comics are empty suits- during a recent writers strike, they went off the air, because the front men for these shows don't have any of their own jokes-there isn't much inside their collective heads.
The under 35 set thinks in terms of sound bites.
They can email, text message and yap on their cell phones till the radiation starts to eat their grey matter, but it is all futility. These people cant change a flat tire, walk in the deep woods by them selves all day, or read anything serious that is more than 400 pages long. 'History' has been abbreviated... 'Skills' have become confused with knowledge...The GPS has eliminated instincts for direction...spell check obliterates the need to know how to spell. we have become tools of our tools, our natural humanity atrophies. The question isn't whether machines think, but does Man?
Science is no longer in the hands of gentlemen scientists; mega corporations and government control research.
'Government' has never been 'cool' ... 'big business' has never been 'cool'...why embrace politicians who are owned by big money?
The music young people listen too is beyond awful-most of it sucks. Although not a direct result of the Internet age, a collapsing aesthetic goes hand in hand with a rampaging technology. A creeping philistinism accompanies the march of our homogenized society. Devo was right.
All the polling and studies suggest that people were much happier 40-50 years ago, before the gadget takeover. More people are loners today than ever before- they are electronically in touch with the world wide web, yet they are forced to eat big Pharma's poisonous pills just to cope with their cybernetic and social hell.
How many trees have to be cut down to satisfy our need for speed? How many tigers are slaughtered to sustain our technological advance? There are only 6,000 left...Do you want to live in a world without tigers?
The original challenge of modernity- how to humanize technology- remains unmet.
"Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men" (Theodore Adorno)
"Technology is the knack for so arranging the world that we dont have to experience it" ( Max Frisch)
"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours" (President John F. Kennedy)
posted by Zero at 12:37 PM
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