I get back home from a long day of work. Sometimes I write. Other times I fall prey to an all too familiar enemy; the screen.
The screen has bright colors and everything is fast paced. The screen moves me to the next image with no persuasion at all. The screen has the people I want to see, without the work required. Yet the screen is an abhorrent waste of time.
That's right. The screen is a total waste of time.
Instagram, Facebook, Gmail, etc. The problem is beyond the big players. It's the desire that is created all along the way. When you have all the answers in the world at your finger tips, vital steps are skipped. As a result of these steps being skipped, they are either forgotten or have no value at all. People expect others to keep up, while they leave a part of themselves behind.
If you've been reading some of my blog, you've heard my story.
I do martial arts, I'm a software engineer, and I dabble in cryptocurrencies. Yet all of these identities are distorted by the amount of time I spend distracted.
I am not blaming the screen or these social media companies, or even the ease of the internet. I am blaming willpower, and I am blaming it on myself.
You see, the screen is the end of me because it makes me submit to it's implications. The implication is that you cannot change the immense hold it has on you. There is always a screen somewhere, whether it is watching, listening or preying. Once, there were programmers, who made object oriented programming to turn various data into objects. Now it is we who have become objects. And I'm not so sure that there is a central modem of control.
AI has not hit the stage yet, at least not overwhelmingly. Self driving cars are not big players in the industry in 2018. AI has not yet taken over 50% of our workforce. It will happen, but it has not happened yet.
What people miss are the transitory periods, so I am illustrating it for you now. The screen is a transition into virtual reality. Before, governments and big corporations used to control money, power and institutions. Now it seems they want our souls, too.
In making the virtual world easier to navigate, in making us embrace digital relationships often times for free, they are preparing us for the future, a future that I have no doubt will policed relentlessly. A future that will not resolve itself without revolution, a revolution that the people will lose.
The biggest issue that we have is not that we are not powerful, but we have become complacent in our desire to understand the world. If it takes more a click of a button, we are not interested. If we have to leave the screen behind, we had better be back. Because we have not posted in a while. Because a person is not really being controlled if they are truly under control. The screen gives us free will, but only in small doses. You don't believe me? When's the last time you checked your notifications? Did it make you happy? Did this sort of happiness exist before you downloaded the app?
We are living in a new world, which is constantly dying, constantly rebuilding itself, trying to be better. If you have developed software, you know that a new update cycle for a good application is every 2 weeks. Incrementally, things get better on the internet. Yet incrementally, I feel the good parts of myself fading into the abyss.
The only way to fight this is to be more profitable in our own lives than the screen can be in using us. We have to create content so aggressively that eventually, through the process, we find our value, and the value we can add to society. If we all start adding a big amount of value, the economy will drive itself, and we will win by virtue of artistic revolution.
Because all revolution is capitalism. And all capitalism is victory. The screen can be defeated by it's elder brother, which is money, which can also be evil.
But the screen is a newer form of evil, an evil we have not yet comprehended. We do not have thousands of years of philosophies and religions to circumnavigate the screen, like we do for class struggles, like we have for money and power.
The screen is a form of evil I hate more, because it leads the masses down a path of self destruction, all the while, promising more. I hate the screen more because we are all helpless to it's loving gaze, and it terrifies me to think it is relatively new, that the number of great, influential people will get smaller and smaller over time, because we will not need to pursue the process of creating great thoughts for us, the screen will think for us, the screen will become the idea, and the idea will replicate itself and become AI.
I'm afraid, so I create. But the greatest irony of it all is that the thing I hate the most in life is my handwriting.
So here we are, aren't we?
