Penzerker

Thinking about how much I missed this site. As a 90's kid in the Pacific Northwest, I grew up through different waves of technology. I can still feel the fresh action on the L/R bumpers of my first Super Nintendo controller. I can smell the plastic of a fresh videogame or the hot reels of a recently rewound VHS.

AOL Messenger and T-9 texting would change my life in complex and likely generationally toxic ways. The comforting and yet isolating reality that was moderating an internet forum for people who believed in tales of Bigfoot, werewolves, vampires, and other cryptids when I was (maybe) 13 -- the feeling of that reality anyways-- still clings around my ribcage on days when I feel the internet has gone completely mad. I have seen such terrors here.

I am a witness- as an author, writer, and rogue scholar with an unused cultural anthropology degree -- My analysis is that the internet has been a leap that only gunpowder, Nuclear Power, and the undeniable fascination our species has with the holy trinity of Love, sex, and food can possibly compare too. Technology, by full definition, is so much more than the discovery of a new thing. It is the rituals around how we use them. How these "Objects" of ours (be that object a focus on a thought or way of thinking, a belief, or a new method for chipping arrowheads) define our lives.

I have witnessed global warming go ignored by the world's governments for my whole life. I was traumatized by the "end" of the aids crisis and survived doing all I could to pray away the "sin" of being queer (oh what shame, being so far from a god that I have no reason to believe in)// I digress, or refrain, or surrender this emotional moment to you... Anger makes me ramble, and I am tired. // The point was that ideas as "objects" directly impact our actions and paint our internal worlds. The thinking around our technology shapes everything we do, and in that way [returning to the main topic] I think the internet is "too good" at spreading ideas.

Conspiracies are real, and that sad fact has made false ones bloom here like aggressive algae. People hurt each other here faster than most in our species could ever have dreamed to do with words in ages past. We are connected now in more ways than any past philosopher could possibly have had a nightmare of let alone a forbidden dream.

In short, I think our reckless leaping into the deep end of this new technology has wrought reckless side effects too numerous to list here.

For one, the concept of time is now entirely f@cked.

A layer of reality has been peeled back. We are all the peelers and the peeled. It hurts, I think, but in some good ways. We all seem to find our joy, I guess

I will admit, there has been much good in it too. This technology gave many of us a safe refuge from the world outside that by any proper assessment is eating us, or trying it's best to. (Capitalism is a monster of an "Object" we can dive into some other time.

I guess, if I was asked to describe the internet in the future, I would say it is some kinder form of Rumor(Fama) - a strange goddess from ancient times, captured best by Ovid in book 12 of The Metamorphoses:

{{There is a place at the centre of the World, between the zones of earth, sea, and sky, at the boundary of the three worlds. From here, whatever exists is seen, however far away, and every voice reaches listening ears. Rumour lives there, choosing a house for herself on a high mountain summit, adding innumerable entrances, a thousand openings, and no doors to bar the threshold. It is open night and day: and is all of sounding bronze. All rustles with noise, echoes voices, and repeats what is heard. There is no peace within: no silence anywhere. Yet there is no clamour, only the subdued murmur of voices, like the waves of the sea, if you hear them far off, or like the sound of distant thunder when Jupiter makes the dark clouds rumble.

Crowds fill the hallways: a fickle populace comes and goes, and, mingling truth randomly with fiction, a thousand rumours wander, and confused words circulate. Of these, some fill idle ears with chatter, others carry tales, and the author adds something new to what is heard. Here is Credulity: here is rash Error, empty Delight, and alarming Fear, sudden Sedition, and Murmurings of doubtful origin. Rumour herself sees everything that happens in the heavens, throughout the ocean, and on land, and inquires about everything on earth.}}

I am a storyteller, that I can not hide. But I hope I can leave you with some hope that I think there is still enough good in us (collectively) I... think I have seen it at least. But I am spending less time on here - the internet- and I think we all need to unplug more.

Some of us need to shake the impulse to reach over to our phone in the dead of night. Speaking mostly for myself, surely.

Anyway, I have to go now.