Hi James Nice one. I often think these things, I particularly agree with what you say about mobile phones, I have never owned one, and am determined to stick to this - though more and more I feel I'm expected to have one. I've always been upset about the - as you say - "prioritising the remote over the present".
I have 2 small kids and it's an uphill non-stop battle hard to get them to appreciate what's around them- people, friends, nature - and doing things that don't involve computer games, ipods, mobile phones. Doesn't bode well for the future I feel dave 2010/1/6 James Wallbank <[email protected]>: > I always thought Second Life wouldn't last. Okay, so now it's a virtual > porn haven, and sure, they'll make money from that for years to come > (sorry...) but that's not really a new way of interacting - it's a > glorified phone sex line. > > Interesting that mainstream SL seems to have tailed off the moment that > voice messaging was introduced - I don't think this is chance - when > people have a very limited communication medium (like the ever-popular > SMS) it leaves space for the imagination. Once the bandwidth of the > medium becomes too high, once the resolution increases, people lose > interest. Why? Maybe less really is more. > > I suggest that Second Life and WOW and the others are all fighting > against a key truth - we all only have a limited amount of life - every > hour spent in the digital realm is an hour stolen from real (first?) > life. Getting paler, fatter, lonelier, shorter sighted. > > I say this with knowledge - getting carpal tunnel syndrome from a > 6-month Runescape grinding binge I overdosed on virtual worlds. Going > cold-turkey was soooo liberating. > > Recently I deleted my LinkedIn Profile. It sucked my time to maintain > it, while I could have been doing real work. Now I'm struggling to > justify microblogging. Yes, everyone says it's "The next greatest..." > but I'm looking hard to see the value. > > So now I'm wondering whether many of the technologies we've been > pre-occupied with are poisonous: > > Every minute you listen to your iPod is a minute of deafness to the real > world. > Every step you take while you're SMS'ing is a step you're taking blind > to the street scene around you. > Every time you interrupt a real-world conversation to take a call is a > minute spent prioritising the remote over the present. > Think of a mobile phone as a comic-book thought bubble. When people hold > it to their ear, reads "I really should be somewhere else". Never before > have so many people been so convinced for so much of the time that their > bodies, their friends and their contacts are in the wrong place. > > Is the real world, right here, right now, so unbearable? If it is, are > we so helpless, apathetic and supine that we're simply looking for an > escape plan? > > Are we so hypnotised by consumerism and fashion that we can no longer > value the free, high res, high, bandwidth, streaming, three-d, > motor-feedback enabled, olfactory, totally immersive potential of... > being here now? > > Stick that in your Second Pipe and smoke it! > > Best, > > James > ===== > > P.S. Meanwhile, the oldies but goldies just keep on rocking. Email is > STILL the killer app. > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- Prints for sale: http://www.etsy.com/shop/visualstories Etsy Blog: http://etsy-visualstories.blogspot.com/ Art Portfolio: http://davemiller.org Art Blog: http://davemiller.org/art_blog _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
