electricity

open studio: technology-dependent person /  by kelly heaton

Technology is changing our entire experience of reality. I grew up without email or cell phones, and only started to use a word processor in high school. Landline phones, TV, movies, and radio offered escapes from reality, but people basically lived in the real world all. of. the. time. Even when we were bored, we hung out in the real world. Now, the instant we experience boredom or social isolation, we check our email. We text instead of calling or talking in person. We search the web. We update our blog and procrastinate on social media. Our entire psychological construct is evolving from physical reality to virtual. Even our dreams replay experiences that do not exist in physical reality. What would Jung and Freud say? As we withdraw from nature and into ourselves, into fantasy and ephemera, we are ever-more vulnerable to basic realities that once occupied humans all of the time. Danger, Will Robinson.