Tom Walker wrote:
>
> Computers, like automobiles, are a social addiction. One stops using a
> computer at the risk of considerable social isolation but the condition of
> using a computer is itself one of social isolation. Just now I remembered an
> occasion when I was in my early twenties hanging out with a group of
> acquaintances. Everyone was talking about times they had gotten drunk. It
> struck me that we were a bunch of alcoholics-in-training because we had
> nothing else to talk about. I started paying more attention to who I was
> hanging out with and why.
[snip]
I think it is not appropriate (and sometimes self-righteously offensive )
when persons call automobiles just an
"addiction" in our (so-called) society.
Yes, a person can
"live" without a car, but only in the same sense as a person can
live without most other things, such as electricity, pencils,
paper, toothbrushes, etc. Metabolism requires only a certain
amount of oxygen and nitrogen (and, of course, some traces of
trace elements), properly chemically
combined and "delivered", but nobody except someone who wishes
to make someone else be an example of Pauline-self-sacrifice
would call that "living". Certainly Aristotle would not.
Automobiles are addictive only for a relatively
few "car nuts".
Computers are a [for all practical purposes unless you want to
be a mendicant or anchorite...] necessary, too, but I think they
are FAR more addictive.
Computers zero in on the "puzzle solving center" of the mind,
like narcotics zero in on other "pleasure centers". It really
is easy to get addicted to computers (it's called "hacking",
etc.).
Few people seek to instantiate the old Honda ad, where
wife bids goodbye to husband and he drives off
in his Honda and arrives at work a half hour later -->
but work is one-door to the right of his house's front door,
whereas he went left to enjoy a long ride.
But, even given the life a British romantic
movie-style aristocrat, in which one
does not have to *do* anything, I think there would still
be many persons who "could not pull themselves away from the
computer".
Computers are a hard drug.
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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