Digital Collaboration and the 21st C.

thrall | THrôl |noun literary: the state of being in someone's power.

 

The main reason the United States is on the irreversible course it is on is because: physics. Let’s call it Historical Momentum; “an Empire in freefall will accelerate unless there is an opposite and equal force.” Or it will eventually dissipate into smaller units of organization; villages instead of cities, energy converted to matter instead of the opposite, human beings given the same rights as tram-national corporations.

 

The other main reason is that the majority of the citizens who are in a position to provide the equal and opposite force are instead in thrall to, or beholden to, The Powers That Be. This control is exerted by The Media. Everything you see and hear is motivated by the Mushroom Theory: keep the public in the dark, feed them shit, and they will be happy. Ignorance is indeed bliss.

 

The latest and most dangerous addition to the Soft Machine is so-called social media. Someone(s) figured out you could make money selling narcissism, gossip, vitriol, games, and cute animals. Not to mention cellular devices and accessories, airtime, and “data.” We’re talking billions of dollars and hours for no productive result. Oh I’m sure a Tweet™ or text or call did something somewhere for someone, but 87% of what occurs over the internet is non-essential. And like most statistics, that one was made up from scratch.

 

The message from “the media;” so-called news and entertainment, and our education system is always the same: the ends justify the means. Pretty much what we learn in school is that it was OK to kill everything and everybody from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Arctic to Straights of Magellan because “we” were white and Christian. I’m not either, so I’ve always had a problem with that (I used to actively root for the “Indians” back in the day before they were inevitably massacred in the Western movies Way Back In The Day).

 

We also learned that although almost all of the actual work that was done in this country was done first with free slave labor (African and indigenous), then indentured servant labor, then underpaid immigrant labor, somehow it’s OK that a few European descendants own and control everything because: “white.”

 

Somehow lost in all this was the fact was lost that we were to prepare ourselves to spend the best years of our lives commuting to a window-less, airless room, hating our boss and co-workers, and being too stressed out to enjoy the few precious hours The Man, which is to say The Banks, allot us on weekends and “holidays.”

 

This process is facilitated by keeping us in enthralled by electronic hallucinations. It’s much more subtle than The Matrix, and much more direct. Every television show, every ad on radio and TV, every movie, most print media, billboards, packaging, “branding,” peer pressure; all compel you to conform to The Narrative. And the narrative is this: “If you are rich, you can do ANYTHING you like and get away with it. And you too can get rich…if you win the lottery, or hit a jackpot in a casino. Just keep working and consuming and take your Xanax…..

 

But the primary tool of control today is that damned cellphone. It has completely destroyed any pretense of literacy; typing with one thumb? Really? The few actual artists still working in the film industry must go crazy seeing people watching movies in portrait mode on those tiny screens. And the sound quality for music is simply not there. Many webpages won’t display properly on phones, and they are certainly not places to store information.

 

No, they are entertainment and distraction devices. And what worries me more than anything is that they are used as babysitting devices. Seeing a child with their device is really concerning. They should be developing their physical bodies, instead of laying around like little slugs. And they could learn two or three languages in the time it takes to get all the coins it takes to complete The Quest, or whatever.

 

The internet was created to share information. While cat videos are information in the strictest sense, I pretty sure that’s not what Mr. Berners-Lee had in mind. There is tons of life-changing information available on the WWW, but it’s very difficult to see on a phone; especially in portrait mode……

 

©2018 J.Thomas/BlackHorseMedia

Via ThePlanetaryArchives/BlackHorseMedia - San Francisco

thrall | THrôl |noun literary: the state of being in someone's power.

 

The main reason the United States is on the irreversible course it is on is because: physics. Let’s call it Historical Momentum; “an Empire in freefall will accelerate unless there is an opposite and equal force.” Or it will eventually dissipate into smaller units of organization; villages instead of cities, energy converted to matter instead of the opposite, human beings given the same rights as tram-national corporations.

 

The other main reason is that the majority of the citizens who are in a position to provide the equal and opposite force are instead in thrall to, or beholden to, The Powers That Be. This control is exerted by The Media. Everything you see and hear is motivated by the Mushroom Theory: keep the public in the dark, feed them shit, and they will be happy. Ignorance is indeed bliss.

 

The latest and most dangerous addition to the Soft Machine is so-called social media. Someone(s) figured out you could make money selling narcissism, gossip, vitriol, games, and cute animals. Not to mention cellular devices and accessories, airtime, and “data.” We’re talking billions of dollars and hours for no productive result. Oh I’m sure a Tweet™ or text or call did something somewhere for someone, but 87% of what occurs over the internet is non-essential. And like most statistics, that one was made up from scratch.

 

The message from “the media;” so-called news and entertainment, and our education system is always the same: the ends justify the means. Pretty much what we learn in school is that it was OK to kill everything and everybody from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Arctic to Straights of Magellan because “we” were white and Christian. I’m not either, so I’ve always had a problem with that (I used to actively root for the “Indians” back in the day before they were inevitably massacred in the Western movies Way Back In The Day).

 

We also learned that although almost all of the actual work that was done in this country was done first with free slave labor (African and indigenous), then indentured servant labor, then underpaid immigrant labor, somehow it’s OK that a few European descendants own and control everything because: “white.”

 

Somehow lost in all this was the fact was lost that we were to prepare ourselves to spend the best years of our lives commuting to a window-less, airless room, hating our boss and co-workers, and being too stressed out to enjoy the few precious hours The Man, which is to say The Banks, allot us on weekends and “holidays.”

 

This process is facilitated by keeping us in enthralled by electronic hallucinations. It’s much more subtle than The Matrix, and much more direct. Every television show, every ad on radio and TV, every movie, most print media, billboards, packaging, “branding,” peer pressure; all compel you to conform to The Narrative. And the narrative is this: “If you are rich, you can do ANYTHING you like and get away with it. And you too can get rich…if you win the lottery, or hit a jackpot in a casino. Just keep working and consuming and take your Xanax…..

 

But the primary tool of control today is that damned cellphone. It has completely destroyed any pretense of literacy; typing with one thumb? Really? The few actual artists still working in the film industry must go crazy seeing people watching movies in portrait mode on those tiny screens. And the sound quality for music is simply not there. Many webpages won’t display properly on phones, and they are certainly not places to store information.

 

No, they are entertainment and distraction devices. And what worries me more than anything is that they are used as babysitting devices. Seeing a child with their device is really concerning. They should be developing their physical bodies, instead of laying around like little slugs. And they could learn two or three languages in the time it takes to get all the coins it takes to complete The Quest, or whatever.

 

The internet was created to share information. While cat videos are information in the strictest sense, I pretty sure that’s not what Mr. Berners-Lee had in mind. There is tons of life-changing information available on the WWW, but it’s very difficult to see on a phone; especially in portrait mode……

 

©2018 J.Thomas/BlackHorseMedia

Via ThePlanetaryArchives/BlackHorseMedia - San Francisco