Digital Sickness
Photo: Alexander Hayes
For the last two years I've noted my own descent into a digital quagmire, eyes strained, minds anxious, addicted.
"Just five more minutes" my children beg and then unrequited lash out physically and verbally when told they have already used up hours of precious daylight. Nintendo DS, Xbox, Ipad, laptop, desktop, television...they switch from one to another incessantly, sometimes trying to control three or four at once.
I am noticing a complete lack of connection with each other in conversation unless its Pokemon, Minecraft, or upgrades-related dialogue. Their attention now screens bound, their heads locked into corporation-led updates.
So what happened back there with our children who are not even yet teenagers? What happened to those family gatherings around a favorite movie, board, or card game?
It seems we have lost control of the very fundamental, minimal grasp we had as parents on our own children's connection with reality. Perhaps, in reflection, as was our own parents’ battle with the omniscience of the television, our battle with gaming, the trajectory of certain Uberveillance.
My head nods, heavy, tears well in my eyes as I struggle to comprehend how to save my own 12-year-old from self-harming, my only control that of intervening in what takes her away from this earth, this reality. Her virtual reality causing her to salivate, unkempt, swearing, and not eat properly.
The road back is as much a change for ourselves as we contemplate where this digital world is taking us, never mind the kids.
As a researcher and as always a mere and mortal human being human, all I can contemplate is how to transcend this digital sickness and the only answer it seems lies in Booroo, Country. In nature, we find the answers to most of what is lacking in a corporation-led virtual reality. At stake is not just our sanity as Elon Musk would happily remove from us all, but that the whole diverse condition of humanity.
