Watch this video about life in the digital age:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/

Okay here’s my thoughts:

On Drone Attacks

I had never thought about the people who pilot the drones in Pakistan.  That is seriously fucked up.  And while it’s great that we’re developing technologies that prevent our people from getting killed, I can’t see the end result as anything good.  In conventional warfare these would be great tools, but we’re using them for, going into neighborhoods half a world a way, spying on and killing the residents, it’s going to accomplish the opposite effect we’re looking for.  Great, we can precisely target a single terrorist and take them out without endangering a single American.  But we are endangering all the civilians in those areas, and all at the push of a button.  By some guy in a cubical in Las Vegas.  I imagine how I’d feel if that happened here.  If another nation decided to enforce it’s law in my country, and they didn’t even have to send people to do it.  There’s not even anyone to complain to, or to look in the eye, to plead with, to fight.  Where does all that helplessness get directed?  Do you just go about your day?  Or do you feel outrage, frustration, and anger?  Isn’t this exactly the opposite reaction we want?

On Video Games as Social Experiences

I dropped my video game addiction before World of Warcraft, but I still remember the pattern.  Inches from the screen, not blinking, not smiling, not flinching.  No emotion, just instincts, flicks of the wrist, and short sighs and stretches every death.  Night time is a clever illusion.  From around 9pm – 4am the sky never changes, so when the first bit of sun comes up, and that sickening feeling of “oh my god I am so tired and I spent the whole night playing games” hits, it’s already too late.  In my memory the social games were the worst.  Games where you are just running around killing people can only keep you going for so long, but if a game actually encourages you to forge friendships with your pixelated kill-buddies?  Forget it.  Social gaming is to death match as crack is to PBR.  That’s how I have always seen it.  However, this video talks about Second Life and World of Warcraft as if there is something redeeming to spending 18 hours a week of your life building relationships with people in an imaginary world.  I’m not so sure.  That sounds like giving up on First Life.  Maybe if I was completely locked down with a corporate job that I knew I’d be at for the next 30 years of my life I might allow myself to get that involved with a game again.  Surely that beats a crack addiction.  But from where I’m sitting, anything is better than a virtual experience.  And you’re kidding yourself if you think a conversation online is the same as in person.  It’s the same thing as unmanned drone warfare.  Where there is no human contact there is no risk and there is nothing human to be communicated.  And speaking of which, Second Life is a sloppy mess of culture placed in a blender and melted to a thick brown ooze.  That’s the problem with these virtual communities, there is no restriction on what can be built, so there is no identity, no culture, no roots.  People flit around between personalities and loyalties.  After all, you can be whoever you want, nothing is at stake, no one will ever confront you.  These are thin, superficial interactions, in a fantasy land of no correlation to the real world.  It has no meaning.  And there is no amount of time that’s worth spending on something meaningless.

On Focus

One thing I might possibly be able to attribute to our world of constant distraction is my lack of focus.  The internet allows me to switch up my focus so often that I don’t even have time to realize I’m not actually getting anywhere.  The instinct of instant gratification causes my brain to shoot off in all directions as soon it has the slightest whim.  Now the question is, given the option of instant gratification, or restricted possibilities, what being would choose the latter?  No one.  Technology has given us, for the first time, this choice.  And we can use it to be eternally distracted by possibilities, or to sit down and focus our selves on the things that really matter.  However I think we are all at a disadvantage, because by nature we’ve been drawn to distraction.  By now it’s been conditioned in us.  For myself, any time I have an idle moment, I find my fingers directing me to nytimes.com, or digg.com.  The real joke is that I hate the articles at digg.com, and I don’t read anything but headlines from nytimes.com.  This must be what the opposite of Buddism is.  Instead of being absorbed in a moment of conscious silence, we are pulled into a constant stream of distraction.  I’m not sure my western brain can even take meditation.  How am I supposed to check my gmail when I’m focusing exclusively on my breath?  What?  Thats the point??  What the hell is that supposed to mean??