VIN 11: Postdigital Unity

As you age, you begin to see trends. Not the fads you saw in youth, but actual trends. They’re like fads but over long spans and incorporating them as well. They’re longer-form gravitations toward ideals. Cyclical recurrences of formerly-existent-but-now-refined ideas.

And the fact is, the vast majority of the first-gen postdigital kids (millennials?) are a bunch of weird creatures.

That’s not to say bad. Never mistake weird for bad. Gates was weird. Think he had it easy before he was making money? No way, man. He was fucking weird. Jobs was weird until he died. It was why he died; rejecting medical treatment in place of home-remedies and warm thoughts.

Fucking weird.

And it doesn’t just extend to intelligence types– though some call Jobs a con-artist before an innovator. That he was likely both is neither here nor there, as everyone’s the same in most ways. It’s merely context that changes. Humans have to be to survive. That’s Humanity. It’s adaptation. It’s Evolution; finding ways to thrive despite extreme, organic adversity.

Do not deny it’s truth. Rather, revel in it; first-gen postdigital kids, (millennials) are the weird generation.

Probably ‘cause we’re all prototypes raised dyslexic on television-frames and text flashing by at light-speed. By the time we’d finally taken our Ritalin and calmed down, it was lunch time and recess. After that, we came in exhausted, completely unaware of the world we were actually experiencing.

Once we came of age, we decided to slow down. Entirely.

Our generation has come to a screeching halt. Not only because of the economy, and external factors, which press in at us with each moment; but because of the sheer want to finally experience something without being forced through it.

This will hit deeper for some than others, but all of you know what I mean:

I recall being educated, but I do not recall my education.

A simple, yet resonant sentiment.

Thousands of years ago, when humans were first socializing into groups more complex than tribes, education was imparted through the same trial-error-observation platform used by all of science today. It was interpersonal in nature, but it was the same, conceptual idea.

Science as it is known today did not exist then. It could not. Not enough reference of civilization– or history– existed yet to be acted on by the call-function.

But now, times have changed. Technology has hurled us headlong. At speeds even we can’t comprehend. The issue is one of grasp; having any on the matters at-hand. As a civilization, Humanity is completely unprepared for the social requirements of a next-level society.

This is bad. Potentially, catastrophically so.

Historically, the less socially-prepared a civilization is to endure a change, the more likely it is to utterly collapse. Ultimately, Rome’s collapse was seeded by its inability to get anything done. Its politics and civics, until then its greatest strengths, began to collapse under the weight of their maintainers’ ignorance.

An innocent ignorance, to be certain, but one all the same. Worse, one no less harmful for it.

Likewise, the same is evident in Central and South Americas cultures whose great achievements rival that of the Pyramids. Ultimately, their culture died from failing to accept the very people they bled for the gods were the ones building their temples.

Eventually, something had to give. So it did. Simple as that.

Unfortunately, it also took with it much collected knowledge in the crossfire. Of all ancient cultures only the Egyptian knowledge is best kept, but notice their name absent above. Though the aforementioned are hardly the extent of cases, they are ideologically different. Egypt did not fall. It ceded its cultural prowess to Rome.

True, it did so largely as a result of decline, one culture’s decline is eternally another’s rise. A sentient species cannot exist culture-less. As postdigital humans can no longer exist information-less. Thus, culture moves always. And like all things, along paths of least resistance– and much too fast for any pre-digital age record-keeping methods.

It is only the postdigital world that can reconcile this; by becoming one culture, unified and constantly changing together.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Plastic Mandibles

In the ocean,
swirls a mile of garbage,
blown there by man’s ignorance
and the ever-tidal currents.

Think on that for a moment.

Good, now listen:
The Earth,
is our home,
not our prison.

One day that may change,
as we soar to the stars,
colonize Mars,
but for now they’re out of range.

So remember the poison,
the trash and chemicals,
and the plastic mandibles,
you dump in the ocean.

They will one day come ’round,
perhaps not then, perhaps not now,
but remember too this creed;
in mindfulness is wisdom found.

Stop hurting the Earth,
for hers is as much your worth.

VIN 10- Meat-U + Digi-U= All-U

Humans are living a dual existence. That is, one of duality; between analog and Digital-selves. At this point in their history, and because of their inexperience and fascination with technology, most of them cannot see it. However, consider them as one subset of their populous, gamers:

Each Human Gamer is both avatar and player. Their actions and effects impact both of their worlds in rippling waves, no matter their size. Said waves, dependent on direction and strength, can temper or reinforce the unrest present entirely in either world– as with any ocean or system.

Likewise, Humans are each capable of this independently, as well as in groups. In that, they are capable of doing so via their existence in either of the two realms– that is, that of the real, meat-space world. (Real-Life, or R-L.) And that of the digiverse, matrix, or net; the shared, pseudo-hallucination we all allow and experience during intake of datum to fulfill need or desire.

In effect, it is the same semi-lucid state as one amidst the immersion of a book.

Technology is the mental equivalent of a water-tap for that immersion. And while there are many different sizes and types of taps, each with their own benefits and drawbacks, ultimately they are not what matters most. That is what flows through them; the water.

Or in this case, data. Information. Reference-stacked 0s and 1s. The back-bone of knowledge, and knowledge itself. Humans are the negative space between these two avatars of meat-space R-L and the digiverse. Continuing to ignore this reality allows them to continue imbibing poisoned water– or data.

If allowed to continue, the second Fall of Rome will be infinitely further, harder, and longer lasting than the first. That is, if Civilization and Humanity aren’t lost to time in the process…

VIN 6- Societal Merit Equation

Imagine a broadcast where every person on Earth can choose to tune in, even if they do not.

Now, if it were compulsory to tune out rather than in, because the broadcast terminal’s always on standby, how many people could receive information? What types could they receive, through it? Art? Music? History? Language? Leisure? Anything? All therein, preferably. Or, enough so said components are easily accessible otherwise through said terminals.

All in the hopes that, never again might a Paragon of progress– a Newton, Einstein, Faraday, or Tesla, be restrained by inequality and lack of opportunity, bounded thought. The importance of that for a society; its achievements and future legacy, cannot be understated.

When billions are already exposed to this, it only smooths the transition. Every moment, those billions are within sensory range of digital mediums. Yet, they simply never connect properly. Take the pervasiveness of technology in a society, scale it to billions; consider how those transmissions, overall, are being used and their effects.

Judge then the merits of your society.