Take back your DNA
I search endlessly through the net. When I lose my footing it is like landslide, I jump on website after website reading and looking at only fragments. The experience is compulsive, and it doesn't really matter what the content is, just that the behavior is reflective of an intensely personal quest.
I'm one of the lucky ones. A few months back we installed a broadband internet connection at home. Now there is a faucet that is waiting to flood my consciousness any time my ability to deal with life is challenged. So, at times this privilege leads to these incredibly isolating experiences. Reveling in the pinnacle of human communication by sitting in the peanut gallery, watching the cool kids at recess. I watch videos - I see faces - I hear their voices, watch them eat dinner and observe them laughing, crying and sleeping. I consume their life by myself. At least I can write about it.
I know that there are people who are capitalizing on this psychic tension and seek to aggregate our digital lifestyle into an easy to digest panacea. They say the future is now and that we should get on board. But will this make our lives easier or just easier to escape from?
There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done if we are to rebuild our communities, ourselves and the world. We'll need to use the existing internet infrastructure in facing these challenges. It is incumbent upon us to continue to harness, repurpose and implement systems that facilitate dialogue, promote action and that have real world results.
We do have a precedent for these kind of plans. Craigslist comes to mind. But when it comes to media, and the consumption of video and audio - we are so very easily lead down a dead end path. We are so desperate to turn the television experience into something positive because it feels so good. Television (not video) is a drug, why amplify its effects willingly, gleefully, by making content for the internet that is delivered in the same way as TV, ALONE.
Socially, the internet is a tool that can help us build bridges. Then we can take the steps to get across those bridges. But, when we get to the other side, we are not on the bridge anymore.
Can you dig it?!
I'm one of the lucky ones. A few months back we installed a broadband internet connection at home. Now there is a faucet that is waiting to flood my consciousness any time my ability to deal with life is challenged. So, at times this privilege leads to these incredibly isolating experiences. Reveling in the pinnacle of human communication by sitting in the peanut gallery, watching the cool kids at recess. I watch videos - I see faces - I hear their voices, watch them eat dinner and observe them laughing, crying and sleeping. I consume their life by myself. At least I can write about it.
I know that there are people who are capitalizing on this psychic tension and seek to aggregate our digital lifestyle into an easy to digest panacea. They say the future is now and that we should get on board. But will this make our lives easier or just easier to escape from?
There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done if we are to rebuild our communities, ourselves and the world. We'll need to use the existing internet infrastructure in facing these challenges. It is incumbent upon us to continue to harness, repurpose and implement systems that facilitate dialogue, promote action and that have real world results.
We do have a precedent for these kind of plans. Craigslist comes to mind. But when it comes to media, and the consumption of video and audio - we are so very easily lead down a dead end path. We are so desperate to turn the television experience into something positive because it feels so good. Television (not video) is a drug, why amplify its effects willingly, gleefully, by making content for the internet that is delivered in the same way as TV, ALONE.
Socially, the internet is a tool that can help us build bridges. Then we can take the steps to get across those bridges. But, when we get to the other side, we are not on the bridge anymore.
Can you dig it?!
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