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| ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US |
Dispatch from the Palm-Zombie Apocalypse
Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy on their high tech devices, while driving, while walking, while shopping, while in groups of friends, while in restaurants, while waiting in doctor offices and hospitals, while sitting in toilets – everywhere. While connected electronically, they are inattentive to and disconnected in physical reality.
Pavlov conditioned his dogs to respond unconsciously to his stimulus.
Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg et al, have taken Pavlov's experiment with canines, and applied the bell conditioning principle to mass marketed and mass produced, hand-held technological gadgetry, plugging humanity perpetually into teh interwebz.
Devious geniuses, these technocratic slavers.
They are the transumanist Borg that have assimilated WeTheSheeple into the Great Virtual Disconnection.
Researchers from the University of Glasgow found that half of the study participants reported checking their email once an hour, while some individuals check up to 30 to 40 times an hour. An AOL study revealed that 59 percent of PDA users check every single time an email arrives and 83 percent check email every day on vacation.”
A 2010 survey found that 61 percent of Americans (even higher among young people) say they are addicted to the Internet. Another survey reported that "addicted" was the word most commonly used by people to describe their relationship to technology. One study found that people had a harder time resisting the allure of social media than they did for sex, sleep, cigarettes, and alcohol.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that 44 percent of cellphone owners had slept with their phone next to their bed. Worse, 67 percent had experienced “phantom rings,” checking their phone even when it was not ringing or vibrating.
Take a moment and pause in the mad rush of hectic life as techno-gadget junky debt serfs in our Brave New World Order, and put down the iPad, turn off the iPhone, quit retweeing your tmblr pics and log off DeFacedBook. Take a moment of uninterrupted, electronic free contemplation, and really think about this:
Have you recently experienced "phantom rings?"
In other words, when the bell rings, do you drool?
I see people as trapped in a pathological relationship with time-sucking technology, where they serve technology more than technology serves them. I call this technology servitude. Richard Fernandez, an executive coach at Google acknowledged that “we can be swept away by our technologies.” Welcome to virtual living. To break the grand digital delusion people must consider how lives long ago could be terrific without all the technology regalia pushed today.
What is a healthy use of technology devices? That is the crucial question. Who is really in charge of my life? That is what people need to ask themselves if they are to have any chance of breaking up delusions about their use of technology. When they can live happily without using so much technology for a day or a week, then they can regain control and personal freedom and become the master of technology. Discover what there is to enjoy in life that is free of technology.
I can understand passing the time on your Mobile Affirmation Device, surfing teh interwebz while your doing things like standing in line for half of the day at the DMV or stuck riding on public transport with no companion to converse with...
...but how about in the middle of a concert, a play or movie at the cinema? A wedding...or funeral...during the ceremony or service? Or how about in the midst of a gathering or party of close family and friends? At the extended family, Christmas dinner table?Or mid-sentence in a personal, face-to-face conversation of some important matter?
As to globalization of technology servitude: Is this worldwide progress what is best for humanity? Is downloaded global dehumanization being sucked up?
Technology is supposed to enhance our lives...not take it over.
More importantly, realize we are being infiltrated, recorded, data warehoused, tagged, flagged and surveilled like no other society in human history. The technocratic tyranny is here, and the hand held gadgetry is one of their most effective tools in achieving their colonization of our mind, body and spirit.. Think about whether or not you use technology more than it uses you.
I can honestly say that as much as I fight it and rail against it, I'm an addict like anyone else. I recently attended a funeral, and found myself checking my pocket for the phantom vibrations of my phone in silent mode, despite deliberately leaving it in the car to avoid the potential distractions during a serious and personally grievous occasion. In the midst of mourning, the conditioned response reminds me I've taken off the electronic leash, and am mentally agitated by it. And I don't even have a "smart" phone.
All our base are belong to them.
