A gutfull of bile
Current mood:
contemplative
Hell is other people - Sartre
Isn't technology great eh, computers, dvds, TV's, Ipods etc. Hasn't it really helped humanity, with all this information at our fingertips haven't we all become more enlightened, educated, intelligent, and happier human beings. Of course not, I heard once that a quarter of the Internet is just porn, and what is porn, well its good or bad depending on your take on it but if you said to the inventors of the Internet exactly how much of the Internet do you envisage being taken up by films of men with massive cocks fucking women in every hole and bestiality, I doubt they would have said a quarter. When they came up with the Internet the inventors weren't thinking of a way of avoiding the embarrassment of going into a newsagents to buy a copy of Razzle, unless I'm horribly mistaken.
The reason I have a distaste for to much technology (aware of the irony that I'm writing a blog on a computer to be posted on the internet) is I was brought up in a Rest Home. I have been surrounded since my earliest days not with people that go on about the second world war but by people who actually fought in the first world war and have the shrapnel wounds to prove it. The attitude of people who haven't seen the offerings of our technology is startling. Imagine never having seen a gangster rap video, Big Brother, I'm a celebrity, a soap opera trying cack handedly to deal with the topics of aids, homosexuality, crack addiction rape and murder, Jamie Oliver. Pop Idol Etc. Or any TV advert, all tv adverts say is 'you need to buy this product and you'll be happier like the people in this advert using it'. They never say 'you've got far to much stuff already, I mean, fucks sake what difference is different coloured bristles on your toothbrush really going to make to your life'. The residents in the Rest Home where used to rationing, nowadays supermarkets are full of food and also the damaging chemicals in them and has this gamut of choice made us any happier? If top of the pops came on TV the old ladies would recoil in embarrassment, their generation fought for equality while now tv is full of women rushing to debase themselves flaunting their bodies off in an attempt to sell their music. Spice Girls', girl power was infact wank power, they where wholly the invention of men who created them to make money for themselves and provide teenage boys with a wank fantasy. Queer artist Andy Warhol once said everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, sadly so many people want to prolong that 15 mins by degrading themselves in a jungle eating spiders etc. for our entertainment. Mark Twain once said something along the lines of 'wanting to be the president is the reason you should be barred from standing' I feel the same way about celebs, in the old days fame mean't something because you were famous for being good at something, now the currency is totally devalued. Idiot celebs like Jade Goody are now rich, why can't they just bugger off back to their homes and stop wanting to appear on our screens. What vacuity is there within their heads that wants attention on them the whole time, like they've anything worth saying?
The people in the Rest home had a totally different attitude to life, they didn't look as though they feared being mugged if they went out, they had a confidence that its OK to walk the streets. Its so sad that now people who fought against Hitler for freedom find themselves scared to go out of their own houses. Secondly they where often quick witted and funny. Thirdly their body language didn't look as though they had spent the major part of their life staring at a TV sucking the life out of their eyes, don't forget that's all you do at a TV, just sit down and stare, it isn't reality, its a small 2 dimensional box with flashing lights, it should never replace reality. But more than anything they hadn't spent their formative years viewing mind numbing shit on TV like a monkey, fantasizing about one day being in the position of the person their looking at, i.e. being on TV. and thus famous. Roger Waters' album 'amused to death' had on its cover a picture of a monkey staring at a television depicting an eye looking at him, it brilliantly sums up what is going wrong, we are, content to be stupified. Far from enlightening us TV manipulates us, tv often keeps us stupid by reassuring us that we're not any stupider than anyone else, with chummy news presenters on TV telling us what the powers that be want us to think is going on in the world. In Bill Hick's words 'Go back to bed America, your government has worked out how it all transpired, watch american gladiators, here's 57 chanels of the shit'
Sure there are good things that have come from technology, washing machines, fridges but more often than not technology that makes life easier can also make us lazier. Technology is also being used to spy on us and restrict our civil liberties barely a day goes by without the government finding a new way to fine us by using technology, the latest idea is to use CCTV to fine people for parking and litter offences.
Big Brother ? anyone.