Digital Zombies

Digital Zombies

I believe you guys know what is Zombie, so I don't have to describe it and it's (their's? ^_^) behavior.

Although a real live zombie is nowhere near nowadays, a person that behaves like a zombie, in one way or another, is somewhat common.

Take a look at your surroundings, especially when you are in public places like a train station, city park, dinner, and restaurant, etc, you'll meet these kinds of zombies.

What I'm talking about is the people that stick their eyes into a 5-inch glass on their palm and not give a notice to their surroundings.

They are what I mean by a zombie, well, let's call them digital zombie. They walk slow, react slow, and brainless because their mind is not there where they are. So we can say that they are -from our point of view-, is brainless. Just like zombies.

That's what drives me to write this. I'm wondering, thinking, what have our creation (digital technology) done to our lives? Rather than enhance our life, the digital world is somewhat ruining our individual life.

From that I came up with a question: Do we utilize Digital Technology as a tool or an escapement?

Comparing Life Qualities

Ok, first of all, since we are going to assess life quality in this digital era, we need something to compare with. We need to compare life as we know it today, with a life at another period of time.

The easiest way is to compare life now in the digital era, with the live then at the pre-digital era.

To make it short, let's see it in 3 life qualities. Well, I believe there is huge list of terms to define life quality, but let's put things short into 3. If you want to add your own, please add it to the comment below. What are these three?

1. Deep Thinking, Contemplation, Solution Search.

Deep thinking, what is it? Our mind is like a cloud of thoughts. Flashes of thoughts sparkling inside our brain. About this, about that, even something distinct and unrelated can shows up on our mind simultaneously.

Back in the pre-digital era, these flashes of thoughts can be tamed. People tend to be more able to control their minds. Why? because they get less stimulation. All they see is blue sky, bird's chirp, fresh air, green field, etc.

When they got something in their mind, they can think about it deeply and broadly. The deep thinking they were done often leads to contemplation, which fruition into wisdom.

As well as solution search, they can make a good quality tought and solution. It's because they have plenty of energy, plenty of time, there is no rush, create something that is the best.

For a small example, take a look at furniture that made at the pre-digital era. It usually made at their best quality. It's durable, not broken easily, it's long-lasting. And every detail is worked with heart. The person who created it, put their soul on their creation.

Classic Furniture

It's like they find peace while doing their work. And this peaceful soul is manifested in their creation.

Meanwhile, life nowadays if somewhat miserable. Despite all technology that spoils us. Our brain is never resting. We allocate an only small portion of our consciousness to notice our surrounding. Most of our time is drowned in small rectangle glass, with all of it's stimulation that makes our brain restless.

There is no time for us to do deep thinking or contemplate. When looking for a solution, we tend to make a short cut, just to make things done in a very short time, so we can have more time to -again- drowned in that small rectangle glass.

Can you imagine what will happen, if Surgeon just cut what is look rotten in our belly, and stitch it back because the surgeon has to reply facebook message 10 minutes from now?

Can you imagine, what will happen if an architect, checking their phone every 5 minutes in the middle of a bridge structure analysis? And then they just do the rapid calculation.

Can you imagine, what will happen, if a mother, attending their toddler while her eyes never leave her phone screen, and the toddler is playing next to something dangerous like an electric outlet, or filled bathtub?

Our connected life tends to create more danger than before.

2. Social Interaction

Dinner with Smartphone

Have you ever notice, when a family having dinner together, say in a restaurant or at a tourist attraction. What did they do?

Yes, all of the family member, sit on the same table, eating the same food, but their eyes is not leaving their phone.

What happened here?

They suppose to be talking to each other right? Share stories, jokes, laugh, and so on.

Yes, as humans, we do interact, with another human, even though it's using a gadget. But what happening at that family dinner is wrong. We must interact with a human around us, especially they are our family.

3. Time Perception

Family

People in the pre-digital era seems to enjoy time passed with all its content. They enjoy every single moment when time passes by.

But people nowadays, they often forgot time. They immerse in digital life from dark to dark. From waking up until back to sleep. Not realizing time passed by.

What is the big effect of this? Many of them don't realize their circumstances. For example, they are single.

Getting married, then have children, then grow them into a useful person in society, is a natural life path of a person.

And these processes, better be started when the person is at peak biological condition, which is during their 20's. It's the human best biological condition to reproduce.

Alas, in the digital era, People have an escapement, into the digital world, so that they enjoying live and postpone, even they don't want to get married and having children.

What next?

Ok, from that life quality comparison, then we have to define, what are we going to do with this digital technology?

Digital technology can be utilized as a tool to help us get the job done, or utilize it as an escapement. Well, yes, technically we can use it for both purposes. As a tool and as leisure.

But we really have to know how and when we use it. When we using it as a tool and when we use it as an escapement. And for the escapement, it is important for us to define the "how much".

We can utilize Digital Technology as a tool in this area:

• help provide insight and data
• take creativity into a new level
• a ‎slave that do things that we unable to do.
• we have to make it just a tool, so we do not worship it and under estimate human potential.

As for utilizing Digital Technology as Escapement, I believe you have your own list, but for short, we can say, an Entertainment that fulfills our fantasy.

Day Dreaming

Since our fantasy can be fulfilled at the digital world, many of us are prefer to live in that fantasy world. Unfortunately, ‎our escape is not forever, and when we wake up in the real world, we can do nothing. Since life in the real-world comes with consequences.

When we escape into the digital world, we enjoyed it so much that it makes us forgetting time, forget about all of the important task todos, and so on.

Let's take an example. When somebody tries to do deep thinking, say to find a solution to a particular problem. Once they meet obstacles, they run away, they escape to digital leisure. But during that escapement, the obstacles remain unsolved.

A student, they are studying for an upcoming test, when he find difficulties on his study, he pickup his phone, open social media, spend 30 minutes to an hour or even more, on a scrolling screen, but got nothing from that screen.

What he did is an escape. Yes, he forgot the problem, the difficulties in the study, but he resolves nothing. The problem remains there. Meanwhile, he just wastes his valuable time on meaningless screen scrolling.

And another example. Do you like playing the game? Well, I do ^_^. I like FPS (First Person Shooter) and RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game. I know how it feels when playing that shooting and ruling game. We are the hero, shoot and slay all enemies. Hundreds of enemies. We are the king, the Emperor, that rules a mighty empire, conquer all the known worlds.

When we playing the game, we feel strong and skillful. We ready to wreak havoc, kill hundreds of men. But in reality, are we really that strong? powerful? skillful? I'm not sure.

Playing a game is like dreaming. We dream of living in another world. In that world, we are superman. But when we "awake", when we stop playing the game, what do we get? Do we still that superman?

The answer is obvious, No.

And during that wasted time dreaming at the game world, what value can we make? What are the valuable things we have created for our "real life" world?

Then we realize we have been left. We have wasted our valuable time and money. Playing the game burns our time and money. It's no longer leisure, it's an obsession, but a dark obsession. And it hurt us, whether we realize it or not.

Conclusion

So after that long deep thinking, trying to find an answer to my question
Do we utilize Digital Technology as a tool or an escapement?

The answer isPractically we do it both, unfortunately, we tend to exploit the escapement function of Digital Technology. And this came up with a dark side.

Many important things in life are often neglected.

The digital escapement is like daydreaming, with a tool, our gadget. But what can we create with daydreaming? Does it resolve our life problems? Mostly No.

So, if we really love our life, please use Digital Technology Wisely. It's a tool and it's leisure.

When we use it as a leisure, please be aware of "how much".

How much are we going to "waste" our life on that Digital Leisure?

Ok, that's all for me. Thank you for reading. I hope it's useful to you, and while reding this, I hope it's a part of using Digital Tech as a tool, not as your life wasted activity.

See you at the next thinking.
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Photo's Credits, from top to down:

• eyerys.com
• mauro halpern
• pxhere.com
• Yjenith