I remember when I was five-years-old my dad gave me a slide rule. I was still in the phase of enjoying pursuits like fingerpainting and playing "pretend like" but when I look back on that gesture, I become aware of how necessary it must have seemed for me to learn how to use the device to engage the world with a firm commitment to aviation, finance, or engineering. It was 1974 and the slide rule was on its way out because the electronic calculator had taken over. Maybe because I was only sparsely mediocre in mathematics or maybe because I was still caught up in Aesop's Fables, I never developed an interest in the slide rule. Thank god the world devised electronic calculators. Now I had another instrument to fascinate me while I neglected to learn its true uses. It was too much fun punching out 7734 and turning it upside down to reveal "HELL" on the display.
Now, those days are far behind me. I've forgotten how to use a calculator except for the simplest of tasks. I've learned how to use a computer well enough to get around in word processing programs or virtual worlds. I have a deep appreciation for the freedom of mobility that cars grant to us, but I also maintain this deep-seeded fear of the devastation that collisions can cause. I have always been fascinated by technology yet secretly suspect of the REAL influence it has over consciousness and the way it seems to outpace my comprehension of the world around me.
No longer do we use technology only as a tool to perform a task. It has become integrated with the center of our existence. I fly around Second Life without a remote sensation of flying, yet when I stand on a high surface in the virtual environment, I get a bit queazy to my stomach. The feeling is real and yet I am sitting on a chair, looking at a computer screen. I feel as if I may fall, and even if i do, I'll just bounce off the ground, dust off my shoulders, and fly away. Still, the fear of the process of falling is visceral and sharp. This is what technology does to me. It tantalizes me with the joy and beauty of freedom and quickness. Then it sends me into a dramatic tailspin, down, down, down, through the depths of my mind. I experience the same feelings when I dream.
When we turn away from technology it is like we awaken from a dream. What we considered the real world during our engagement has slipped away and has been replaced by the other reality. Only the reality is not the objective reality of things and ideas, it is a reality of introversion and denial. While engaged with technology, as with dreaming, our minds focus on the images of now. We are not really worried about how we look or what people will think. We use the tools to fixate on tasks, we dream images regardless of whether people will find out. When we wake up from either state of engagement, we are confronted with our notions of reality and become self-critical, competitive and flooded.
Psychological speculation has always intrigued me and I've been sucked into a lot of it from Freud to Jung, Perl to Skinner, Lacan to Zizek. Each time I read anything psychological, I start looking at my mind as the construct shaped by what others have defined. I enjoy it. I like to wake up into my dreams, fully unaware of where I'm going. The same when I wake up into Second Life and teleport to a poetry reading or art exhibit. I like how books have shaped my perception of reality, and how the voices of thinkers have influenced me to see the world around me as both fantasy and form. I imagine I'll continue to redefine my neuroses and contemplate my ego-involvement with the fabricated universe. We all agree that the ground upon which we stand is REAL as we look to the sky and see forever, God, azure, stars, or ourselves. All the while, the ground waits to swallow up our bodies, and we only feel that reality when we are unaware of feeling at all.
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