Social Media: Opiate of the Masses

Welcome to the Brave New World.

Everywhere you look people have their heads bent, their eyes staring at screens. Someone should be making neck braces so we can stare at screens in comfort. Make the braces in colors that fit our personalities. Internet providers already know what we like, what is taking them so long to get with it?

Alas, the days when people looked at one other are passing away. We are addicted to social media. What does the future hold for the human race? Shorter arms? Longer necks? Mass myopia? Should we fear technology if it separates strangers from one another? Is technology our friend or the new slave master?

In less than ten years I have seen the few become the many in regards to the number of mini-devices that are being used in public. Our devices have become our workplaces, computers, phones, TVs, and social managers. Facebook is now passé. Tumblr will be passé soon, and its founder off developing another social media platform before he turns twenty-five. Your GPS doesn't talk to you? OMG! Make a pouty face with your colon and parenthesis key, people! I do not make those icons. Or speak Internet Slang-lish. I am very uncool.

I once thought of the fascination with social media as being an ego driven thing, and a passing fad. It proclaimed the person was hip: a mover and shaker. Now it simply equates to keeping abreast of everything. The perception we have swallowed hook, line, and sinker is that the time before these devices was the Dark Ages. How quick we forget that humanity has survived without our social media gadgetry for fifty thousand years. Then it was  tête-à-tête.  We need more vis-à-vis and less voyeurism on the viewing screen. We need more humanity in our interactions, and less chatting and texting. Time savings be damned; let us proceed backwards to the more genteel times of the past, if they can be found.

Q: Do we need to be in touch so much? What are we to do when the Tree of Knowledge is at our fingertips? Do we dare not to eat the apple? Shh, I hear the sound of a snake slithering amongst the leaves of the tree. The reality is that the Internet is a mixed bag of good and bad, like life. Porn has usurped romantic love for many people, and the Internet has the most enormous database of porn the world has ever known. 

The concept of what a family looks like is endangered due to our new freedoms. Pregnancy will soon become a test tube option. Curiously, with the use of technology, the younger generation has a higher level of impotence, and it isn't just hot baths and nicotine that have done the damage. 

It has been shown that sperm counts have decreased when in proximity to cell phones and laptops. http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/04/05/researchers-find-sperm-counts-on-the-decline/  So, if trends continue, sterility will become the norm. Then you will have to grow your child at the corporation. Then you will program your child; choose its sex; and choose its career as easily as pie. Stud services will be in high demand. But why work so hard? Let the corporation do all the work for you! After all, don't they know their employment needs better than you? Relax. Isn't life grand? 

The Internet has made research, entertainment, work, and education, instantaneous experiences. The devices have come down in price to such a degree that nearly everyone has at least one of them. Technology has made us slaves. We have become lazy and dull, convinced we are more learned and on top of the world.

Example A: Tattoos. No one cared about tattoos twenty years ago but bikers, prisoners, and sailors. But now it is an ongoing fad for the young who have forgotten that art is best viewed on gallery walls and in public spaces. Most of the older generations were inoculated by having seen art and knew the difference between the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and the one made of ink under the skin of a foolish generation. The young and naïve were swayed by peer pressure to get tattoos. Few are the independent younger thinkers who said ‘No.’ 

Likewise, we have been duped by those in control of the Internet, who have brainwashed us to believe that in order to survive and excel we must participate, or be left behind. Do it or die. None of the young are saying 'No' to the Internet. They were raised on it. They need it. Or so they think. But Bill Gates didn't have the Internet when he was growing up, did he? 

As we become more urban, the implements that once were understood: the hoe, the hammer, the saw, are forgotten. When I was a boy, seeds were anyone's to use, but not now; now you can be sued for using seeds owned by corporations that once made Agent Orange, such as Monsanto.  The same is true of chips. Want to see high security? Try walking into Intel's chip making facilities, or anyplace anymore. One day you will need a card to slide through a security reader at the door of Macy's and your local grocery. Why? Because if you haven't got the right software under your skin, you can't do anything. That is where this is all going, my friends.  Big Brother Land.

In the technological badlands, human beings still live in the 19^th Century.  People still make quilts and violins by hand. People make their own wood shakes for their roofs, plant crops, and listen to nature. Nature has gotten by just fine without us, and it will get on much better when we are gone. I don’t want that day to come.

But here is my prediction: there will be a backlash to the social media madness that has gripped the world. There will large desertions from the mainstream. In Portland, young and old disenfranchised people refer to the coming Zombie Apocalypse. The unemployed, less tech members of society will be the walking dead, outcasts to be feared as being barbaric. But here’s the rub: the zombies will be the normal ones.

As robot technology improves, menial labor skills such as how to replace a toilet, dovetail a wooden joint, or make an espalier with non-GMO apples, will be more rare. Monsanto will select the next president behind the scenes. They will dictate the wars that will generate the most income for the corporations. They will own us, right down to the genetically modified organisms floating in our bloodstreams.

I am not referring to a far distant future when we are terra-forming Mars; I am suggesting this will be the reality in fifteen years. We will be known by our barcodes. Our hands and heads will be scanned to pay for our groceries and merchandise at the checkout counters. Physical money will disappear from use. Our diets will be pills that are created by the government-managed companies. Take the red pill or the blue pill; ether way you are going down the rabbit’s hole, Mr. Anderson.

This scenario has been described in sci-fi books and films for years, but most of us did not believe it would come to pass. We hoped it was simply the overactive imaginations of sci-fi writers. I grew up in the generation that was certain we would blow ourselves up long before interplanetary or interstellar travel was an everyday experience. My generation expected an Orwellian future similar to the cult film by George Lucas’s THX-1138. I was foolish to believe the internal combustion engine would one day be eliminated. No. They will not stop building coal-fired power plants, not while there is still coal in the ground. Not for hundreds of years, a time when we cannot go outside for fear of the ruined ozone that lets the UVA and UVB radiation roast us.

Should we be wary of technology? Is this a witch hunt? Should we be worried we will cook our brains by the use of these social media devices? Should we submit to having chips implanted in our heads or hands so we can be online 24/7? Many would say no, but what if your employer required it or you would not be employed? And what if grocery stores and banks required it or you could not buy food or cash your check?

But wait a minute here. Am I being a pariah? Should I be concerned when I see where the world is headed? Am I being unjustly paranoid? People feared television. People feared telephones. Isn’t the social media-craze simply another great new thing to help us experience life in a better way?

Maybe. But what if everyone’s devices suddenly went dead and we were forced to join reality? Are we so afraid of dealing with strangers that we must immerse ourselves in devices? Must we be talking to everyone 24/7? Why?

Technology is the new opiate of the masses. Should we be concerned with who is directing the flow of information? Information is a powerful tool for those in power. If we are told that terrorists have forced America into another war, can we believe what we are being told? Digital wizardry is so good that if they broadcast a terrorist bombing of an embassy in the Middle East, how would we know it was faked? Is deception not the inevitable outcome of too few people controlling the media?

What is the future of the human race if our lives revolve around social media in more tailored ways? If Google knows everything you like, every site you’ve visited, everyone you know in your circles, and is customizing your experience, then are we not all simply numbers in a cloud database? I have noticed I cannot search for anything without the words filling what I am searching for before I have finished typing. It knows me that well. Or it thinks it does. And who is “it” and who is “me” and will there come a time when I do not know the difference?

In the next Presidential election, the candidates will not travel the country. They will simply appear on our smart phones and tablets to give their speeches. The outcome will have already been worked out. Either candidate is their candidate. You only think you have freedom to choose. That is what they want you to think.

I recently watched a revealing National Geographic Bee on PBS. The finalists, ages ten to thirteen, all had roots in India or the Middle-East. They had been selected from over four million children, and were the brightest of the bright. As the older generation dies off, twelve year olds will begin to rule the world. They already do.

Do we not need holograms to take us to the next level? Do we stand on the brink of Star Wars technology? Is anything beyond the grasp of human beings if we can imagine it? Do we even need to go anywhere to do our work? Will robots take over the manual labor of the usual blue-collar occupations? And once we are free to do whatever we can imagine, do we actually need to do them if we can simply do them in our heads, as in the book ‘Feed’? And if our lives are taken over by the imaginary lives those in control want us to believe, how will we know we are generating electricity as in The Matrix? 

It has been postulated that all of this perceived existence is a sophisticated computer program. If that is so, we are already more deeply entrenched as slaves than we believe. I do not think this is the case. Not yet. But soon, very soon.