westid

I’ve neglected my online presence lately. In fact it’s non existent. My phone says last week that I had the screen in front of me for three hours. This will change vastly if that screen is a computer screen though. However in the spirit of screen time, we are edging toward that one day a year when everyone messes about with their consumer electronics, phones, whatever. – anyone who is anyone will be online this christmas, and forevermore going forward

Let’s stay in character, it’s a shit sandwich this year and everyone is going to need to take a bite. A much awaited moment on the calendar has been marked off as complete. While very very important, I notice here also that looking at the calendar of the preceding couple of years tells you nothing about something the hoops I had to jump through just to get this far. It’s incredible how far people will go out of their way to not help you. I’ve seen people who actually need that help regardless of my own situation tore a new one just because of the way that their assessment went. Well it didn’t go well, in fact it was very confusing. I would go so far as to say I probably weren’t looking at the mad little tests just pictures only I am supposed to work out “what’s going on here” but there was just madness and all it’s nonsense all over the screen. None of it made sense at all

December crawls forward at a very minimal pace. Instead of letting it all build up into one big boom, all that I’ve done is try to put things that happen every month of the year (notoriously grinch-like in stereotypical manner) and that takes a lot of stress off the noggin. Money is a language that seldom speaks english, and was certainly designed and built in another part of the world

In the early nineties they used tablet and voice activated computers on Star Trek until the coming of the 21st century, but on television they are all cultured military people in uniforms who listen to classical music and have plays, obviously a level of intelligence fit to match the growing technology that is used to much convenience now, to the point where an entire economy is dominated by our inability to leap from the lap of luxury straight into the cold reality of it all. I think that it’s this convenience that has allowed a handful of companies providing the most vague of platforms that they want (what do we care as long as it works)

To make various measurements about the lengths to which we will go in order to hang onto our creature comforts, I studied 3 methods of communication online. There are three that support the client-server nature of internet communications: a real time text relay, an asynchronous bulletin board forum, and the online article machine (this wordpress blog entry). Unfortunately my measurements didn’t measure up. I’ve got my own platform now in a way. I think there is a lot that can be said for being disconnected from that constant screen either forcably (to begin with) or realising that no rapid changes occur because of what is happening on screen, so eventually when you’re conditioned away from the screen it becomes much easier to let go of without still bearing in mind the bigger picture

Conversely, my thoughts turn to the even bigger question: how set-in does the continuous presence of a mobile device need to be before it becomes as involuntary as breathing, an appendage of the brain that was never there but we are too impatient from decades of immediate gratification to wait for humanity to involve

How would a mobile device become involuntary? If this was genuinely what the mobile device was introduced to create, we would have more than a facebook and instagram click to turn to when we need to keep in touch with one another. Ancient but standardised ways (in the internet’s story) of keeping in touch have both risen and fallen in the struggle to build what I would call a heavily advertised regime

When I started using the internet millions of people were on vast networks of message relay services and you could literally spend that time learning all sorts of things. Channels and platforms would be packed full of enthusiasts, experts; and it would all be free. This domination over the way we keep in touch with one another at the moment, the amount that these big companies matter would disappear overnight with very little change required in the behaviour of the people

There are a lot of gaps between then and the way that things are done now. If you for any reason should fall into one of these gaps, for better or worse your mind will switch on and see that we don’t really need all of this shit. I love communications systems but they are plagued with political agenda and the furthering of commercial ventures or advertising campaigns. Privacy used to matter to people but now we have no idea what is going on inside that litlle device

I set up my own message relay in memory of those times, where the internet was a lot harier than it is now. 2009 – the year that real communication died. I’m going to keep that platform open forever, until I’m dead hows about that. Still a few more years left in this one !

From Star Trek to the big online names, technology evolving at such a magnitude that we won’t be able to keep up realistically for another twenty thousand years. Hallmarks of a concept that needs to double itself over and over in size to stay relevant in this world