The advent of Internet, the changes it has and is forcing in a very short little time, has been a shock. A positive one, maybe, but still a shock. It is not new, though: I still remember my first toying around with an 8-bit computer, in those days when computers were isolated one from another. That tiny fever was the seed of what we have now. But what is it that keeps us so hooked on computers? And where to set the limit between proper use and orgy?
It is an important issue to clarify. Computers of course open vast, beautiful possibilities to human communication, and we need every inch of that possibilities to face our current problems as a species. But the counterpart is that there is always a risk of vice and escapism in computers (and people are certainly noticing it); we have a screwed up planet, and when the skies storm we cannot get away from our problems by hiding ourselves inside a pen drive.
Of course I don’t have the answer. This post is only my two cents into the collective intelligence, the main features of the situation as regarded from my point of view. You’re invited to share your experience and ideas.
- Variety is granted: “what’s the fuzz about the whole thing?”, told me a friend of mine in the mid-nineties, “If fuses blow, there goes the big sensation. It is only electricity after all.” Well, yes and no. In fact, if you are walking through the street one day and a brick falls into your head, that’s electricity too. Electric impulses conveying physical forces. Matter, which is mostly hollow, and surrounded by electrons. We are all made of electricity. So what we intuitively know, that the reality that we experience through computers is not worse or less real than the “outer” world, is also true from a scientific point of view. But it is not worse, or less real. No wonder that computers have become our central leisure unit: everything can be centralized in it, and you can switch from one thing to the next in seconds. For example, being involved in a couple of good forums, or watching every worthwhile YouTube video, could be, on their own, the task of a lifetime, but they are only a couple of examples out of so many.
- A versatile yet ambiguity-free language: unlike human language, with all its complications, middle points and dark areas, computer language is fixated, predictable. It satisfies our need for completed things and closed systems. You don’t have to like programming to notice how straightforward computers are: things either work or either don’t (if, besides, you do like programming, you’re lost, my friend). The limitations of such a language (complex math as opposed to human language, which is organic), get blurred by the variety of options.
- A feeling of craftsman: with handicrafts mostly disappeared, one can still satisfy one’s need to construct things. This is, maybe, the “toy” dimension of a computer. You decide to install program A and not B, you feel smarter than the rest because you’ve configured this like that and linked this so as to… It amuses me when I hear programmers say that they have “created” this or that. There is a feeling of pride in that. Humans must manufacture things.
- My theory: simply a hunch, the model I use to navigate in this wild world of us: computers are the wet dream of any left brain (need for order, closed systems, specialization, frontal focus). We cannot go any further in that direction, so left brain is simply standing there, doing its thing and waiting for its right pal (creativity, spontaneity, emotion, absurd, openness) to get more prominence. With such a square minded device ruling our world, perhaps it is more important than ever being weird, being different, running away from the established formula, for the sake of the whole human being, of the whole Humanity being. Will be able? Well, stay tuned for new chapters…
What do you think?
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