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Viewpoint
Beyond Cyberspace:
Seeking Oneness in a Hi Tech World
by Elyssa Paige
Flashback—I am a child curled up on the couch in fright and delight, watching a film I was probably too young to see: The Terminator. Years later, I revisit the film with matured eyes, recognizing killer humanoid robots as symbols of technology that became so powerful as to threaten existence as we know it. Who ever thought that an action flick could have such intense moral implications?
My generation was quirky in its hi tech transition; I used typewriters in high school and crossed over to a PC in college (a Pentium One—how’s that for archaic?) It was the 90s, the Internet boomed overnight, and the world was at our fingertips—anywhere, anytime. Amazon.com hit the scene as the first big online shopping site and Mapquest.com provided effortless directions to anywhere. Communication entered warp speed; cell phones went from clunky oversized emblems of wealth to lightweight flip-top toys of the masses.
In this new digitized age, worldwide communication was as simple as the push of a button or the click of a mouse—but not without a cost.
For example, our cell phones and computers are made from a rare mineral known as coltan. This precious ore quickly became the object of illegal mining operations; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it has been gathered through abusive means such as rape and slave labor.
There are also health consequences to our hi tech world. Cell phones emit electromagnetic fields, or EMFs for short. Studies have shown that EMFs may alter brainwaves, have dangerous effects on tissues and cells, and can cause cancer. Countries in Europe have recognized this health hazard, introducing legislation to discourage cell phone use among children. Conversely in 2006 in the United States, Sprint signed a $2 billion contract with Disney to market cell phones to “tweeners,” a term coined to identify the target market of children between the ages of eight and 12.
Don’t get me wrong; I too love having a cell phone to call or text anyone at anytime and a laptop on which to create this article. But is there not some sort of balance that we can strike?
The solutions are out there. Special headsets block EMFs from passing from your cell phone to your body. Companies like Nokia have shown corporate responsibility, adhering to self-imposed environmental and social regulations pertaining to the mining of coltan for their products. And we can recycle those used electronics when the next fad lures us in to make life faster, easier and more expedient.
Convenience is an undeniable advantage to our hi tech society. Do you want to go back to washing your clothes by hand, pumping your own water or sending telegrams? I don’t. But perhaps an examination of our priorities is in order with all of this time we’ve seemingly created for ourselves.
Look around; ironically, people seem busier than ever. What’s more, the effects of technology on our interpersonal relationships are palpable. We build information superhighways and global bridges of communication that simultaneously seem to isolate us. Do you stop to talk to your neighbors these days? How paradoxical it is that we can instantaneously blast a message to thousands, if not millions of people, but often don’t even know the people living on our streets.
We’ve all seen oblivious passersby completely zoned into their iPods, children who would rather play video games than go outside to play, YouTube addicts, and on and on. Our hi tech forms of entertainment are considered unparalleled in quality and availability, but again, at what cost? How much time do we “spend” appreciating the beauty and serenity of nature, sharing a meal with family and loved ones, or in quiet meditation, compared to texting, tweeting, and meeting people on MySpace and Facebook?
It all boils down to the choices we make. Everything we say and do and every word we utter has an impact that spreads far and wide. As we log-in and become part of global networks, let us create the same concept of community every day—at our jobs, at the grocery store, or even on the freeway when someone cuts us off. Let us focus our technological prowess on communal good, rather than individual convenience and profit. Slowly but surely we are moving in this direction—think solar panels, LEDs, and hybrid vehicles. More and more, we are beginning to recognize each other as a human family sharing the gift of this amazing planet.
With all of our technological capacities, it’s high time that we stepped it up to get smarter and more efficient at serving the whole. It’s a matter of widening our scope beyond our own noses, beyond our backyards, our cities, our nations, our planet—all the way back until the sun, 109 times larger than Earth, is but a speck in the cosmos, and farther back until the Milky Way is a grain of sand. With this widened perspective, it’s easy to see us all connected as one—beyond cyberspace.
Elyssa Paige is the Editor of Vision Magazine. She welcomes your feedback at elyssa@visionmagazine.com.