Even as society, (read: the business community), continues its headstrong rush towards everything being done “online”, there are many signs the Internet, emails, texts, & so forth are fraught with problems which are piling up & fuelling a growing fire of resistance/backlash/desire -for- something-else.
Privacy; security; cyber-bullying; hacking; identity theft; addictive behaviours like online gambling & online shopping, online drug purchases, online porn & its harmful effects on families & children, texting & driving, overuse of the online virtual world which affects human psychology, families, & children; hours & hours spent online which impacts people’s fitness, & creates a variety of ailments like neck & back injuries; overuse of electricity which wastes power & money. The list goes on and on.
A lot of people are waking up to the realization that all this technology is not freeing us from dank, dark lives of enslavement & borderline poverty, it’s surreptitiously taking you there, to that precise spot, in a roundabout way, as more & more of your time is spent doing the work of the companies you do business with. You can’t get your supermarket/bank/gas station/etc to serve you , assist you in making purchasing choices, or offer cashier services and carry-out service because….over the last number of years they’ve successfully and carefully enticed more & more people to do all this work themselves, for absolutely free, under the guise of saving time & money. We were promised in the 1980s and 1990s, just before the tidal wave of the Internet revolution arrived on shores everywhere, that we would shake off the chains of those boring, dead-end, 9-5 jobs that either the father or mother commuted to, and proceed boldly towards a new “Information Age”
Suddenly , one can’t help but notice it’s essentially become the law you have a cellular phone as there aren’t any public pay phones around. They insist you “manage your account”, “go online”, “save a tree” , “go paperless”, that you must do everything yourself to somehow, in some weird twisted, impossible way…save yourself money and time. Hoping you won’t notice all the money spent on computers, smartphones, ipods, e-readers, printers, ink toner, paper, internet access fees & cellular fees, all the extra charges you pay downloading everything and exposing yourself to yet more advertising from the instant you wake to the split second you manage to fall asleep beside the eerie glow of your gadget you’ve brought to bed like it’s your very last fix of heroin or crystal meth. Opening a kazillion accounts online, each with its own username & password. How everybody hopes you will hand over your credit card information which gives company X that coveted, assured, non-stop, pipeline-style access to your funds & ensures you will forever remain a “valued customer”, when they really should be using the word “user”. How energy And utility companies everywhere have twisted the arm of the governments they practically control to mandatorally require you accept various wireless meters to monitor, calculate, regulate, & prepare your next online bill for consuming electricity, fuel, and now even water.
More and more people across the globe are rejecting all of this and looking for saner, simpler alternatives so they can re-establish some balance, harmony, affordability, time, and even joy in their lives. They’re discovering once again that it’s relationships with other people and their favourite activities that brings their lives happiness, enrichment, & fulfillment. Not month after month, year after year, and decade after decade coped up, cloaked, and estranged from the natural, physical world, and themselves, and their inner voices, their lives swallowed whole by the Internet and “high technology”, or as they pause once more, frozen and oblivious to the world and people around them, on a sidewalk or bus somewhere. In every corner of the world, more & more people are planting food, riding bikes, boating, playing beach volleyball, taking up pottery or some other art form, picking up a guitar, arranging a meeting place to spend time with friends just hanging out, doing things once again.
Some people contend, though, that this analysis is wrong, and all this technology is here to stay and that surely we don’t want to return to the Stone Age. Too often free speech seems under attack and those holding views different from our own are targeted for scorn, derision, disrespect, and contempt. So, is the alternative to the self-serving picture painted by corporations automatically a return to the Stone Age? Do we have to drink the Kool-Aid and accept that we either return to handing over all our raw materials to foreign interests or perish horribly? No, we don’t have to accept Tar Sands pipelines, wireless meters, automatic pre-paid accounts, self-serve queues, & being condemned to a non-life confined to being tethered to our electronic devices, our attentions restricted to screens.
We can find balance and make the choices that most benefit ourselves, our families, our communities, and our environment. We can behave in ways that more closely line up with our values, and that of our ancestors. But we have to act now, and begin by taking baby steps to reclaim the ground we have given away for short-term wins.
Write a physical letter or card and send it off to those you care about. Surely they’ll appreciate it a lot more than to click on it for a moment, then to click away just as fast. Visit your local business and patronize it. Ask questions and purchase as much local and green as possible. Insist on receiving customer service for your dollar. Refuse to give out your personal private information, just as your grandfather or mother did not that long ago. Pay with the cash you really have, not charging up enormous sums you realistically cannot possibly afford to pay. Consult and acquire knowledge. Get into a good pair of running shoes, try out a new sport/hobby/art/food/music and and explore. Stop daydreaming on x.y, or z website, frantically flipping through endless tweets and random texts. Start the process of waking up to the real you. Get out into the real world and live your dream. There’s only a finite amount of this precious resource called “time” in the real world we all inhabit.
silvercharm 