glowing screen / familiar faces

hooray for the iranian new year....matches has today off, courtesy of it~

here is a riotously enjoyable piece of media, via the onion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGxdgNJ_lZM

and chuckles aside, this recent trend of wariness towards technology certainly has some fair ground to it. no, m isn't frightened by the thought of robot police trammeling down his door to arrest him for being 100% biological (yet). that future is a distant one, he thinks. aside, it is strangely disconcerting to realize a future prospect that you will likely not live to see. in the case of pollution, or resource misuse, it is fair to say that we will probably not feel the full effects of these problems in our lifetime (not their full implications, at least...obviously things are already heating up). but we have a responsibility to our future generations, don't we? even though it's possible that we won't feel the squeeze of the problems that we are potentially creating, we still feel the need to mitigate them for our next generation. that's not just a courtesy....that's a faith. a faith in humanity, in the gravity and importance of our existence, our ideas, our ability to thrive and achieve beyond what has been seen thus far.

but how dependent, in other avenues, have we started to become? technology drives us; it facilitates communication and networking, research and learning, exposure to the previously unexposed. it has so much value, and yet usually lacks that final drawing power of reality whereby one is fully immersed in the event, the thought, the scene....whatever it may be. it can only transmit on certain levels, certain frequencies, and our ears are trained for so much more. so, we could call it simply a resource; we could belittle it and make it secondary. this is probably the most common perspective upon the matter, that there is an inescapable artificiality inherent in these transmissions.

this is the way that mattress is used to contemplating the matter. yet simultaneously, he feels a little bit hypocritical for resigning it to such a small stage....the reason being that it tends to play such a large role in his life. whether he would admit it or not, most of the people that he really cares about are only reachable through secondary communications. most of the exposure to the distant world that he glides upon is due to the efforts of others, using this marred medium. is the internet an art? is it around to ensnare certain aspects, amplifying a sense or two and discarding the rest for all practical purposes? matches has been awake and alive for the most part of to-day, but perhaps a third or one half of that time has been spent in inadvertent worship of this glowing laptop screen (for what is worship at its basest than a commitment of time and energy). that said, technology is beginning to encapsulate a lot of his waking time.

is it purely by faculty of pride, then, that he wishes for technology to attain some more validity than he currently assigns to it? he could well be hiking right now. isn't. perhaps in thirty~ but you see, this is a dilemma....he does not want to admit that perhaps he is not 'living' fully, simply because perhaps too much time is being allocated to the vast applications of technology. think of it as a large online game....one creates a new identity, explores a new space. but it cannot possibly have all the intricacies of real time, spent in real life. it can be considered an escape, a sheltered and mitigated application of the mind. for the most part, it is looked down upon by the common person...this 'online' life, this breaking of ties with actual sensations in favor of virtually-induced ones. note; this certainly is not meant to rip upon the casual gamer....m knows that there can be a lot of justification and legitimate worth found in such occupations of time, even though he may not choose them much for himself and his time, anymore. no, rather this is to brace against the rift of the real vs. the virtual; to expose the sides of the schism a bit more so that the light can trickle down and help us to make decisions more clearly.

if both his internet (lappy) and his phone (cellular) were simultaneously to be thieved from him in the midst of a crowded streetcar, his first sensation would probably be an anger, a distaste about the loss of financial investment on things that he will most certainly need to make purchase of again. this sensation would be first, but not foremost. no, over the course of the next three or so hours, he imagines that he would start to feel his thoughts slipping toward that intangible arena of virtual communication....knowing that based upon an extension of time, he would certainly be missing out on some fleeting communication from someone he knows, somewhere distant. anyone, it does not matter whom. his hand would twitch, and in moments of distraction would trail its way into his pockets in search of a phone to dispatch a text message on. he would not find it, and would again be frustrated....but this time it would feel much more like the loss of touch, than the loss of an apple pie-slice of paycheck. it would grow and grow, immeasurably (for who can gauge such intangibles without some sort of ECG analysis); it would stack to heights of unbearability. it would drive him to a momentary sort of madness until he retained his grip on that actual, fairer and more complex side of life....the operatic immersion of reality.

you see the point, he presumes. there is a duality being experienced in life....some degree of time being spent engaged in an intangible tornado, swirling with code, words, and mathematics. should this be thought of like sleep (to some people! matches certainly finds merit in sleep and, more to the point, dreams), a 1/3 reduction of the amount of time that we have alive? m wonders, if he ceased with the trifling communications that he has with most people online (not all, some are very interesting) whether or not they would still be just as good of friends. chances are that they would, they would just have to wait for actual face-time to catch up and engage in the classic witty banter. he finds that most of his true friends are just as cordial and engaging as always, no matter how much time has slipped since he last spoke to them. so perhaps he could completely do away with that time online, and be the better for it~ tough to say with any certainty, as he does enjoy keeping up with his peoples.

he supposes it will all be sorted out in time. it's just a question of current application that is bothersome~