Why am I so angry?

I’m not the technology queen. In fact, I am far from it. Most of the time, I’m screaming at my computer and I check my email and Instant message. I joined Facebook because my friend made me an account. Now, like the rest of the population, I am addicted.

Learning about such ideas like a controversy about a girl posting a vlog on YouTube as lonelygirl15

and how this “real” girl was scripted and hired to begin a new form of media, I was disgusted. I grew up on TV and Internet TV seems dissatisfying and wrong on a moral level. Why should I buy into something that is suppose to be from the heart? And of course the articles that I read and the more that I learned about Bree and her fake team I became angry.

So is this Bree conspiracy like a virtual rape? Was I raped after being gullible and believing this girl? Is it weird that I am cursing myself for believing this girl after what she did? Or do I have an obligation to accept this new culture?

What does this have to say about other cultures that are being formed on the Internet? I have no idea to react to how someone can actually be assaulted and raped in a MUD environment. The Internet is an arena for the transfer of information, but what happens when we are violating our basic human interest?

I have posed a lot of questions since I’m not sure of the answers. I am truly baffled and I am not sure how to understand. I had to call my friend–a Network Administrator–to ask him a dozen questions about MUDS and how everyday actions can play and how rapes can occur. “A Rape in Cyberspace: or How and Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society” by Julian Dibbell explains how a different dimension was changed by a single action.

In the end, I am angry about something I have no control over and something that I do not understand.

Are we dehumanizing ourselves with technology?

In a world, based on technology, full of conflict and terror, we are so dependent on other systems for recording the events of our daily lives. As a culture, we are so dependent of instant messaging services, email, digital cameras, and above all digital cell phones. Cell phones are now attached to our ears and for some taking part in blue tooth technology, cell phones are constant. What has happened that we no longer feel connected to ourselves and have the ability to read our inner selves? What happened to the ideas of meditation and relaxation? And reconnecting to our spirituality? If technology was no longer available, would we be able to relax as a collective?

In an article by Vannevar Bush “As We May Think,” published in 1945, the author states, “Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to put his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down party way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursion may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important” (9). (On a side note, it is important to note that the author spoke about technology and published this article in 1945.)

Our culture has become so complex that we need to advance our technological resources to record each and every moment. I know that each event is recorded with a digital camera and once I get a grade on a test I call my mom or if I’m having a bad day I call my best friend. There is no such day that I am without technology. What would happen if we all stopped using our cell phones and went back in a time where neighbors “called” upon each other? How amazing would it be if we went back to physical labor and reconnected with ourselves without technology? Maybe students would use the library not for studying purposes, but for research and to take books out for entertainment?

If we all took a step back from technology, we may become better people. No longer would we have the problem of technological literacy and the technology divide? For once, since the beginning of time we would all be equal and there would be nothing to divide us.