We have the internet when we could be talking in public, technology can at times be seen as a alienating force, I always question this feeling of looking into a lit - screen how it makes you feel, is it uncomfortable .... :-) James H
I think its uncomfortable, and I think a lot of people carry out activism on the internet, thinking they're affecting change, when really they're changing nothing. I know this technology is killing the planet with its production and disposal, that its powered off the strip mining of the earth, and that, despite being promoted as democratic technology, its production empowers concentrated capital. Its also a tool of surveillience. Im sure the NSA is databanking everything we write. A surveillience state apparatus is pretty much an inevitability with this technology, despite the fact that people asert its neutrality. It was created by the millitary, which is the central pillar of the corporate-state.To think it can be repurposed for peaceful means is probably as misguided as thinking that atomic fission can be repurposed peacefully. I think a technology is only useful if it empowers people, economically and environmentally, on a local scale. Computers, above all don't do this. 2/3 of the world don't even have internet or computers. 1/3 of the world gets the benefits and even outsources all the costs overseas, in the form of heavy metal tailings in production and ewaste. They get polluted water, we get an iPad. They get pirates radiding their villages and coastlines for rare earth metals, we get a new commodity were just gonna throw away after a few years. I don't even think we should think it our responsibility to give computers to them. We just need to leave their eco-systems and their self sufficiency intact. The way this technology has been pakaged and sold, primarily has to do with consumption. Tech industry overuse the term "revolutionize". Its almost a mantra. I look at how its used. It doesn't grow food in my backyard, and it doesn't decentralize the means of production in any serious way. Therefore, I don't see it as revolutionary.
I am a college teacher of art. The steepest obstacle against which I struggle is the zombieism created by the hypnosis of electronic hallucination: screens. The minds of my students are shaped by their constant immersion in screens. I ask them to look, and they are unable to see; their visual perception is controlled by their habitual conditioning by screens. This is the biggest challenge I face.
