Blog
AMAZING SUPER POWER of OFF
What is it exactly?
In this age of expanding connectivity and connect-ability, the big push is for us all to be more connected and stay connected. Why? Who is this important to? What happens if you don’t want to stay connected all the time? It appears we are drifting toward losing the ability and liberty to dis-connect. The idea to intentionally disconnect means one must be aware, conscious and vigilant that disconnecting is even an option. Or else we are just passive receptors without a filter and a wide-open channel, unconsciously allowing the constant and incessant pounding of media noise and millimeter waves to bounce off buildings and penetrate our being? Is this what we have ignorantly signed up for every time we fail to read the terms and conditions when we are prompted to update an app? As we walk in circles trying to find a better cell signal, it probably would be a good idea to become more conscious of our own self-determination. Responsible in regard to our own use of technology, or how it is ultimately using us and tracking us all for more and more data.
It’s obvious for the most part, we all seem to really enjoy technology. But what is our relationship with it? We affectionately hold a device in our hands and check it constantly. Is this love, is this casual, is this business or is it a dopamine addiction? Where is this relationship headed? As it evolves, will we continue to surrender? Will we continue holding a device, or will we wear it, or will be soon be hosting it in our bodies?
At the moment in 2020, we are still predominantly using holdable or some wearable devices like cellphones or watches, which thankfully can be discarded and separated from our person. If we are holding a device like a smart phone or wearing a smart watch, we can still turn it off to some degree, or pull the battery or sim card out, or bury it, or throw it off a bridge into a river, or throw it on a bonfire, or smash it with a hammer and destroy it and walk away from it dramatically demonstrating that we are still free souls. At this point, we still possess some freedom to lose the device. (However, our data is permanently in a cloud somewhere.)
But what happens, (and we all anticipate this is coming) when we may be bottleneck detoured out of our holdable or wearable devices and we are seduced by novelty, compelled by convenience, subtly coerced or ultimately forced to be microchipped with an implant into our very own bodies? (I read they have parties for this in Sweden.) To paraphrase retired Brigadier General Robert S Spalding in an interview in Oct 2020, ‘in a 4G world you can (still) opt out, but in a 5G world you cannot opt out’. Good old-time religion is being over-shadowed by ‘big tech’s’ vain faux-God attempt at omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence that is being rolled out systematically via surveillance using facial recognition. One day our ability to dis-connect may be as unrealistic as having the imaginary superpower to leap a tall building in a single bound or to have X-ray vision, and we sure won’t be allowed to be invisible. What then? WILL WE BE ABLE TO TURN IT OFF? Escape it? Somehow, disconnect from it? How? I guess that’s why in the beginning they called it the ‘world wide web’. We are all increasingly being caught up in this web. Maybe, who knows, we all may want to just fondly reminisce back in the day, when we all had this simple, but AMAZING SUPERPOWER…of OFF!
November 2020