WHEN THE DIGITAL AGE IS IN THE PAST...?

So Clint Jacob was at my house tonight, and he had this to say...

"What if a thousand years from now, our current level of technology is labeled as 'the digital age?'"

HO - LY - SHIT! CLINT!

That just blew my mind. It's really difficult to think of technology as anything other than "digital" these days, isn't it? Isn't it funny to think that there was a time when light-bulbs were the latest-breaking technology?

What about the Bronze Era?

The Stone-Age?

And look at us now! We have already put so many labels on the different sections of history, each one a little more advanced...a little more sophisticated than the last. And now we're at the point to where technology sometimes seems unable to meet our demands. Whereas before it seems we almost feared technology (old people), now it seems we can't possibly get enough. Surely there will come a time when this "fad" of digitization will become a part of history just as the Renaissance did. And perhaps as basic of an intellectual evolutionary step as the advent of the wheel.

It's fun to speculate about when technology will cease to be sufficient to meet our needs. One day in the future humans will look back at the year 2009 and try to understand what it was like to live as intellectually deprived as we are now. After only roughly 160 (of the roughly 5000 on record) years of using electricity and we've already figured out just about everything you can do with it.

So what's next?

Well, maybe technology has figured out a loop-hole. Maybe it figured out a way to ensure that we remain dependent on it. All it would have to do is figure out something that we cannot get enough of, and that it (technology) would be equipped to satisfy.

Well it seems we cannot get enough of entertainment. We need it! So much so that we make recordings of it so we can watch it later...just in case you are called away for work, or two of your favorite shows air at the same time. Could we ever fully satiate our appetite to be entertained? Today, a relaxing evening means laying around in sweat pants and Just Watching TV. This is how we choose to spend our precious leisure time. If it doesn't occupy your leisure times, often times it inspires it (ex: saw somebody on TV go bun-gee jumping and decided "Why not? I'll give it a try!").

It's obvious that technology has a huge influence on our lives. It doesn't merely dictate what we do, it dictates what we WANT to do. If anybody ever got control of such a dangerous thing as technology...


...oh...right. Technology IS being controlled. Dammit.


By who? Well...everyone smart enough to take advantage of it. Primarily businesses (restaurants, jewelers, clothing designers, music labels, BANKS, professional wrestling, sporting franchises, auto manufacturers, toy designers...you get the idea). How can these people best take advantage of this?

How wealthy can you get before money is insubstantial? If our capacity for greed is (as far as we know) infinite, couldn't even the absolute wealthiest people desire more still? What more could they possibly demand out of their lives?

What is it that THEY would want? I just can't imagine. They've made it difficult to imagine happiness as meaning anything other than "financial freedom" (more like en-slavery). We spend our entire lives striving to accumulate as much of these monetary "credits" as possible, and while we're occupied doing that...what are the people who don't NEED to occupy their time doing that up to?

Rest assured, there exist MANY who live their entire lives with money being as trivial a necessity as toothpaste.

I really have no idea what any of this has to do with the "Digital Age". But getting back to that...

I don't think it's a good idea to watch too much TV. Or really, any at all. That's the point I'm making. If you're concerned about being "out of touch" with the world, the internet does a great job of as a resource for the most recent of happenings...as well as remaining a fairly accurate account for history (via the sharing of nearly any video footage that exists thanks to YouTube). You may argue that there are advertisers on the internet as well...but they're not nearly as obtrusive. TV ads force you to sit through them patiently while you wait for your show to commence. (Tasteful) Internet ads do not impede your contact with the content you seek. This of course excludes pop-ups, but most people I know just close the window without reading it...so i don't see it as much of an influence. I'm not presuming that internet advertising couldn't become more of a problem in the future, though.

So, reviewing...you probably shouldn't watch [much] TV.

Think if the media didn't bring other people's personal lives into your living room. Most of our social issues would disappear. Because the bottom line is that most of the issues that we're fighting about (ex: gay marriage & drug use) do not affect the lives of anyone other than those who are directly involved in the act/incident/whatever. Suddenly our problems disappear.

If we could achieve a non-TV- watching society, AND implement more of a small-community-based society... well that would be awesome. TV nationalizes everything. An incident that only directly affects a small community of people is suddenly subject to the scrutiny of people (the rest of the TV-watching American public) who aren't affected by the event what-so-ever.




----------




Technology is great. It improves our quality of life and allows us the time to ponder greater mysteries...like where did we come from? and, What is our future? But a side-affect of technology is mass-media. I think it's wise to be cautious of the effect it has on you...and in particular any younger, more impressionable minds..





________________________
Question everything! :-)