_ | \ | \ | | \ __ | |\ \ __ _____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________ | ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ | | | _/_/_____ | | > > _/_/_____ | | | | /________/ | | / / /________/ | | | | | | / / | | | | | |/ / | | | | | | / | | | | | / | | | | |_/ | | | | | | | | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | | | |________________________________________________________________| | |____________________________________________________________________| ...presents... The Screen Generation by elliot.pank __//////\ -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- /\\\\\\__ __ Grand Imperial Dynasty __ Est. 1984 \\\\\\/ cDc paramedia: texXxt 412-08/29/2008 \////// Est. 1984 ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ __ |___heal_the_sick___raise_the_dead___cleanse_the_lepers___cast_out_demons__| I was born around 1984. I want to tell you about the screen generation, the generation that was young in the year 2000. Our problem is not only that someone might be staring at us through a screen, like in the Orwell's vision of a dystopian society at the time I was born, but that we stare at screens all the time to see ourselves. In the book _Doors of Perception_, Huxley evaluates what happens to the human brain when it is undersupplied with sugar. He then uses mescaline to support the effect. I think I have experienced similar perceptions without drugs, on the computer; watching images and videos, reading e-books and texts, having chats, not eating or drinking enough, being isolated from the real world. I could compare drugs -- a medium of perception of the world -- and the Internet -- a medium of perception of society. The peak of these experiences was a few years back, when I had had an Internet connection for a long time already and knew my way around the web. Today, many years later, I am writing this in almost the same state of mind - suddenly, the telephone rings and drags me back to reality from dreamland. I raise myself from the chair and stagger down the hallway to the phone. Before I raise the receiver, I try to remember if I forgot something important, concerning this -- the other -- world. I don't know, just like I didn't in those days. I can't define my current state of mind; I have been reading, connecting, and absorbing content. Lost, windows with text and images scattered across the screen, fragments. Time loses its importance. I am part of the Internet generation. I tend to call us the "screen generation," because that is what we are; we are constantly looking at screens to find ourselves. Since I was six years old, I have been using a computer. I got my first online flatrate after elementary school. During my time at school, I had the same ritual everyday: come home, throwe my bag in the corner, switch on the computer, and immediately establish a connection to the Internet. Even in my early online days, I received much of my knowledge online. School was such a boring place. Basically, I could only motivate myself to do enough to receive some good grades; after that, I forgot many of the "facts" quickly. Everything was so empty of emotions; teachers and classmates meant so little to me. Everybody was drinking the Kool-Aid and engaged in keeping what they considered their social-lives running: Monday to Friday, telling cant about their lives and "adventures" on the previous weekend and waiting and hoping for the next one. Most of them weren't interested in their surroundings, nor did they have any interest in art or culture, nor any real interest in each other. I hated so many of them and loved so few. My evenings were spent with other freaks at punk concerts; what little free time I had was spent elsewhere with real friends, feeling alive. I felt confronted with the notions of the norm and career throughout my youth. Work to be able to buy, learn to be allowed to work. Everything seemed so wrong, so far from my real needs. Very early in my online experience, I spent a lot of time in online communities, open forums where people shared videos, images, artwork, jokes, and texts and discussed them. I also spent time in closed communities where people sharing the same interests would connect to exchange knowledge or stay in contact. I met many of these people in real life, spent holidays with them, had parties with them, had sex with them. I knew some people from the Internet better than those who sat next to me in school. Online, you could get invitations to art shows, streetart events, underground concerts; I experienced the web as a powerful tool of organizing life and at the same time as a toy for organized waste of time. Luckily, there wasn't only trash and dirt online; worthwhile material was there, but one had to know how to search it out. The experience of being able to access so much human culture for free had a great impact on me. This process ignored the rules and regementations of private property, and I saw it all first hand. Books could be spread online, every song and album was there; later whole movies and complete discographies were available for the taking. To a growing extent, the online culture influenced the offline culture; bands released their music online and songs containing samples hit the top of the charts. I have always been addicted to this digital world. To me, it's not cold and dead here; it's colourful and filled with content and communication and free stuff. It's my interface to the endless human cultural production. Now I know how easy it is to get lost in front of an interface. I think I know now how to balance it. I go outside and play, I sit at night at the ocean and listen to the waves, see the stars, feel the warmth of a campfire, climb on the roofs of my city, and let the wind stream past my nose. But when I return from long or short trips, alone or with others, the world is still the same, society is still the same. Our needs are administered by a production that is guided by profit maximization. Most of the people don't take part in this profit; they are used to generate it. Eight hours and more a day, then the tube home and then the telly for recreation. The whole circus of advertising, newspapers, and television shows tries to show us some meaning in all this and lets everything seem normal and natural. "Free time" is getting sweeter: everybody is invited to lean back and enjoy passivity and consume prepared ideas and products. Consume, work, consume, work, consume. Some see similarities between the Internet and the TV. Both seem to be oversaturated with poor entertainment and irrelevant information. I don't know if I find this comparison quite accurate, though. I grew up without a TV, so maybe I don't have enough experience to judge this, but I see certain differences. One is the possibility of influence and interaction. On the TV, the industry is showing its view on the world. The existing system is presented and justified. Why does everything seem so natural? The commodities, the work, the poverty, and the wealth? Because the roots are never explained. It seems that on the web, critique is more present and you find analyses for the different aspects of society (though with the critiques, as with the content itself, one has to separate the wheat from the chaff). You can get lost in the web, just like in front of the TV. In the past, I spent whole weekends in chat channels and had exactly those conversations that appeared so strange and meaningless to me back in school. I watched with excitement and played more and more realistic computer games; I enjoyed the cheap entertainment. But thankfully I got over that. I would like to point out the similarities between the online world and literary culture. Books have been around for a very long time. They have always been a way to spread ideas and to formulate critiques, alternatives, and theories. They are the documentation of human thought. The web is the new way to make text available to others. I learned about many important texts there. Since everyone can publish online, you are staring at a giant mound of dirt when you start. But as I have been reading for essentially my whole life, I learned to comprehend big texts very fast and to search for the ideas. I had a hunger for culture. The puzzle pieces came together; my pain and incomprehension about the mechanisms of the world and why everything was so administered and unfree. Online, you find people who share your concerns and you build networks. There are so many connections and you can receive feedback to your own art and share thoughts on art and philosophy. There are collaborative texts and artwork. This has an impact on the content-consumer's thinking also, this feeling of working together with many people on a completely different level than that of the normal world: in a free, equal, progressive, uncommercial way. When I look back to the traces I have left on the web, it's like a long-term diary of moments and feelings. I like to stroll around the endless archives of the web and to view the contributions of all the people I have met. In some ways, there has been no change at all in my web consumption, even though the texts I obtain have become more and more advanced. Often, the online ramblings of others result in unstructured reading, overloading me with text. The really thought-provoking stuff and good arguments I still get from printed works. And hey -- life is about more than reading and learning. In fact, the whole meaning of culture and critique is to transport the idea of how a good life could be lived, to find ways of expressing oneself and to feel every moment as joy and life and not as survival. The separation of life in the real world and the relocation of the communication and the arrangement of this life to the virtual world is a separation that causes new damage. It lets everyone spend more parts of their lives using the media, and gets everyone used to a distance between them and other people. The results are pretty much like the experience of only talking on the phone and not having direct conversations; a big emotional part of communication gets lost. This process is growing as I write; more and more people use the web as a tool for meeting, presenting themselves and for administration of their life. In most cases, the line of communication loses itself online and no offline culture and communication comes from that. The online and the offline societies continue to exist in parallel and this relationship continues to have the effect of separation, bureaucratization, and lack of emotion. Basically the web is only a medium of human communication, so it contains all the negative sides and contradictions of human society. But it can establish a free space for the spread of critiques against the ruling establishment, critiques of reality. A space full of knowledge and inspiration. I am writing this as a small contribution to this pool; perhaps someone will be awakened by it from seemingly endless hours online, or maybe someone will find himself described herein. These are the words of a young person that has had access to the Internet for more than half of his life. Writing it felt necessary, and now seemed to be the right moment to record these thoughts and reflections. The phone rings again. It's someone I love; we'll meet for dinner. A good plan. ___________ BLATTA---NON EST---VACCA ___________ \ / \ \_ _/ / \ / |A G L A| \ \ / / |A G L A| L ||\/X\/|| O \ EST_ _EST / L ||\/X\/|| O || \./ || \ \ / / || \./ || |\ ||_3 4_|| /|NON cDc NON|\ ||_3 4_|| /| | -------._((___))_.------- |EST | EST| -------._((___))_.------- | |\/)(\/\ [ x x ] /\/)(\/| \ | / |\/)(\/\ [ x x ] /\/)(\/| |(YHVH) >A \ / O< (AHIH)| \ EST / |(YHVH) >A \ / O< (AHIH)| |/\)(/\/ _ (' ') _ \/\)(/\| \ | / |/\)(/\/ _ (' ') _ \/\)(/\| | -------' ) (U) ( '------- | \ | / | -------' ) (U) ( '------- | |/ || . || \| DAEMONSEMEN |/ || . || \| || / \ || ELIGERE || / \ || V ||/\X/\|| E V ||/\X/\|| E |A D N I| the original e-zine |A D N I| /_________\ - today, tomorrow - /_________\ xXx DYNASTY xXx FOREVER xXx DYNASTY xXx _ Oooo xXx / RULE BOVINIA \ xXx / ) __ /)(\ ( . \ / ( / \ \__/ ) / Copyright (c) 2006 cDc communications and the author. \ . ) \)(/ (_/ CULT OF THE DEAD COW is a registered trademark of oooO cDc communications, 1324 Lexington Ave. #173, NY, NY 10128, USA _ oooO All rights left. Edited by Hella Kitty. __ ( \ / . ) /)(\ / \ ) \ \ ( \__/ Save yourself! Go outside! Do something! \)(/ ( . / \_) xXx BOW to the COW xXx Oooo .ooM