Beloved computer.......

I have spent the past few weeks wrestling with a sick computer and deadlines which meant I have been traversing the countryside once again to beg and borrow the use of everyone else’s!! Not a pretty sight….I thought we had the virus thingy under control but apparently not…..and here I am again, using an imposter……

Oh well, it is interesting how imperative technology, especially communication technology has become to the living of our lives…..just before Christmas the Optus phone network in our area experienced problems and for about four days I had no computer and no mobile phone….an opportunity for peace and relaxation you may think??? No, an opportunity for restlessness and the wild running around which I did to find a phone and computer anywhere that I could access……I was like a foundling in the desert…..how hooked have I become? Yes hooked…this ease of communication and disbander of distance is like a drug….I cannot imagine surviving without it….I who am of the hippy generation, resisting TV and all things commercial and whose partner gamely resisted the computer age in our home for as long as we let him hold out! Yes this same me of milking goats and homeopathy…of meditation and simplicity…..this same me cruises facebook with intensity, writes emails with alacrity and texts (albeit slowly) with gusto! I ignore the pop-ups but cant help but avail myself of the quizzes, I resist the adds but love reading the world news and other tidbits of information offered……I join causes by computer proxy and send cyber gifts…..I am addicted to the world of make believe and cyber commuting….half real half not. I get a high out of turning the computer on (sounds like a heady relationship) and am patient to the enth degree when it suffers from overload! (Oh I can hear hubby say, if only this was me!) I bank, buy and organize via the computer…..

The real truth of it is that the computer insurgency is altering the world at an incredible rate. Business, transportation, industry, libraries, schools, and domicile enthusiasts have become married (and I do use this term loosely!) to the computer. Computing has grown to be an imperative part of the majority of our society. The actuality is no industrial nation could continue to exist without it. Is this good or bad??? I think we have gone too far to even bother to ask this question…….

For me I like the computer because it does what I tell it ( all I have to do is get my request right, clear, in the proper format….) I can never hope to find the proper format to get my requests across to humans with any hope of a guaranteed result….( especially when the humans are teenagers….)


Alex Soo -Jung -Kim Pang has an interesting blog on the philosophy behind cyberspace and computer technology he says: “Cyberspace is a "metaphor we live by," born two decades ago at the intersection of computers, networks, ideas, and experience. It has reflected our experiences with information technology, and also shaped the way we think about new technologies and the challenges they present. It had been a vivid and useful metaphor for decades; but in a rapidly-emerging world of mobile, always-on information devices (and eventually cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and swarm intelligence), the rules that define the relationship between information, places, and daily life are going to be rewritten. As the Internet becomes more pervasive-- as it moves off desktops and screen and becomes embedded in things, spaces, and minds-- cyberspace will disappear.” Meaning I think that the defining line between reality and non-reality will soon be so fine as to be unobservable…….bringing some real ( can I use this term now?), understanding of the Buddhist notion that all things in reality(?) are not real……..oh well I like the way I feel when I make a witty comment on facebook and do not need to know if anyone else really found it witty, I love writing my blog so I can talk silently but ever so diversely and profoundly and unstoppingly without worry of others boredom or understanding, I like going to the bank at midnight, paying bills at dawn and having my day on the beach and I really truly love the supreme indulgence of playing games whilst looking for all intents and purposes to my family as if I am too busy to interrupt!!!!!!!


Oh beloved computer get well soon........