Inland Night Lights: Computer Communication Eroding Human ...

Here's a discussion about a feeling I have frequently.

I think this has to do with spending a lot of time on the computer.

I come home lots of nights and feel absolutely invisible. Talking to the birds and my baby helps. Listening to music helps. Cleaning house helps. Any action performed in the three dimensions that we physically live in, helps.

The problem is that when you do something for 40 hours a week, that is long, long hours of behavioral conditioning. All those computer, screen hours are spent in a place where my immediate location is irrelevant---all I'm doing is being the eye in the sky (eye in the screen) tapping on a keyboard, plugged into the hive mind. I am not "in" the present.

And, looking around, I see that lots and lots of people are in the same boat. Do they have that weird feeling by the end of the day? People on that thread blame the original poster for smoking pot, but that probably relieves his symptoms, rather than exacerbating them; besides, he says he had this problem long before he ever smoked pot. I would imagine pot would help, alcohol would aggravate...in fact the alternative smokes I favor do help quite a bit, if only to loosen up the clenched jaw that results from a day in the void digesting and regurgitating the rotten news of the day in broadcast format. So there I am in my head. But only in my head.

I might need to get a baby bird companion. When Bernie was here with me he helped a lot. Lots of work though.

Besides, that doesn't change the fact that when you spend 8 hours in two dimensions, existing not in your body but only your mind, it is an alteration of reality--the reality that the human mind has dealt in for millenia.

Suddenly, all of humanity stares into screens for most of the day.

This is why I am afraid maybe I agree with the responding person who says the OP's problem is a spiritual ache because he's coming to the realization that we all are doomed.

I think it is possible that people are literally unable to save themselves from tyranny because they have been coerced/tricked into living in two dimensions only, and the actual work of self-governing must be done in three dimensions---the dimensions in which people actually have conversations with each other.

People are losing the ability to communicate, to bridge differences. I am seeing this before my own eyes. In the workplace, computers have been an effective way for upper-upper echelon managers to ignore the effects of their edicts upon the troops. Send an email or a memo, never talk to or interact with the employees, much less painful to lay them off fire them. The role of the computer in corporate culture is a sociological study that I'll be guessing has never actually taken place, despite a world rich with opportunity. Why aren't universities and think tanks studying a change in human communications that has massive everyday impacts upon human behavior?

I am thinking that this might just be because computers and living in two dimensions enhances the ability to deal with multiple-choice options (searching) but does nothing for one's ability to imagine or intuit new ways of doing things..in the three dimensions.

It is a terrible problem, because the computer also makes knowledge-sharing possible in a way it never was before. We are all connected to the hive mind through the wires.

But is it good for democracy?

I know self-governing seems tantalizingly possible through the Net. But I also know those Arab Spring uprisings brought together a whole bunch of demonstrators who knew what they wanted, but did not have the solid community structures to step in and take over governance. There are certainly communications tools available in a way that never has been possible before.

But, when one considers how the computer has impacted everyday relationships, there are troubling signs. If people cannot even make eye contact in the elevator---if they must have their eyes on their hand-held device the whole time---are these people one can expect to communicate enough with others to create democratic communities?

People need to be able to be in the present with other people. "Occupy" knew that, which is why they did what they did. The rest of the world? They seem to be perfectly fine with the idea that someone else will do the job of democracy..for them.

(Overheard: discussion about race. "Have you ever seen any Japanese homeless people?" says one person. The other agrees, there are no Japanese homeless people.

Except for the really nice Japanese kid who slept in our carport for a year and a half and read textbooks every night. Really quiet kid who would chase off the drug addicts. Never bothered anyone.

"Work ethic" was another phrase I heard...but I can't hear most of the conversation. Which is probably a good thing.)

Source: http://exiledinhollywood.blogspot.com/2012/03/computer-communication-eroding-human.html

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