Is This Your Brain on Technology?
Q: Is This Your Brain on Technology?
A: Please tell me, what is the alternative? I remember being the last of my friends to get a cell phone because I didn’t want to be ‘attached’ to anything that required to be plugged in. Finally, I got one, and then another…well, you know the rest.
Once I had a dream I was practicing yoga with both hands on my mat in the common posture known as a downward-facing dog. I felt something poking me on my right palm near my wrist. I went down into a child’s pose and turned my hand over. Coming out of my skin was a wire, emerging just as a sprouted seed. I then ran outside in shock only to look up at a bird on a tree with wires coming out of its feathers. I lost my breath and woke up from the dream, or did I?
First Friendster then Myspace, later I hesitatingly plunged into Facebook. The Social Media Revolution came upon us and I posted my inspirations and travel curiosities. An interesting twist on my personal timeline is that I was then swooped up into a spiritual community, wherein giving them all of my resources, time and energy, I fell off the social media wagon so to speak except for anything that promoted the work of this group. After this, I now have a personal experience of what the inner cogs of a propaganda machine sound like at full speed.
Fast forward a decade where I began to rebuild my life and this time, Instagram became my social medium of choice. Where is best to share my art, writing, inspirations and new business? Where the people are. And thankfully I am not saying that everyone is on social media, yet I know perhaps only a handful of people who are not.
To trust or not to trust? Well, I don’t share my most personal or intimate treasures with the world, nor do I tend to bare my skin for likes. On one hand, it seems that we are already screwed in the sense that ‘the government’ or google, or whoever it is behind the curtain already has all of our information. So what difference does it make? On the other, how eager are we to give it up willingly, just because everyone else is doing it? And what happened to modesty by the way?
And then there is the concept of time. Our precious life. Inhale, exhale…there are only so many breaths we will take throughout our lives. And once our time is up, there is no negotiation possible. How many hours of screen time will I have accumulated in my life? Versus reading books? Listening to music? Hiking mountains, playing with children, running barefoot in the sand, feeling the sun on my skin, writing by hand...?
This is my brain on technology, and more specifically, my mind, on social media - my body absorbing radiation, my thoughts on overdrive, my emotions tugged this and that way. I observe the tendencies for compulsion, addiction, and comparison as the primary result of continued swiping through the feed for an unconscious period of time, numbing, wasting, searching for connection? Or is it plain curiosity? Sometimes it could be for education or a laugh. But at what cost? What is the solution? I heard recently that ‘Social Media’ as an epidemic is neck and neck with the Climate Change Crisis as a global emergency. I have friends who are giving their all to help save humanity from themselves by working steadfast and swiftly to counter the seemingly irrecoverable damage done to our gorgeous planet we call home. And in my inquiry, I am exploring how can we save humanity from themselves by countering the seemingly irrecoverable damage done to the one and only soul of mystery we also call home, inside our skin.
Seems to me that a brilliant future would require both, a healthy planet and a healthy mind. Technology is going nowhere fast, and in itself, is not the beast whatsoever, as it is a neutral amplifier similar to money. As we progress as a society, so does our capacity to create. The further question of inquiry at the moment is then how can we use technology to solve the issues at hand? Perhaps they will pull enough CO2 out of the atmosphere, transforming it into biodegradable plastic, to where we can regain a sense of climate composure. Maybe we’ll return to analog and offline activities as the next common prescription. Perhaps there are alternatives to social media still found online, utilizing the best aspects of technology that can help us save ourselves from ourselves…
