Technology is doing more than just alienating us from one another
Damage in the Fort Walton Beach, Florida area caused by Hurricane Opal, which struck on Oct. 3, 1995. Image by Del Stone Jr.
On Aug. 5, 1995, and again on Oct. 3, 1995, something strange and wonderful happened in Fort Walton Beach.
Hurricanes Erin and Opal had roared through the days before. The town was in a shambles – trees down, boats sunk, houses destroyed.
People were busy restoring order. They helped themselves and they helped each other – but that’s not the strange and wonderful part.
Electrical service was out in most areas, which meant there was no air-conditioning, and no television. People were forced to go outside where – gasp! – they bumped into their neighbors.
Conversations began. Visits commenced. Cookouts ensued. Neighborhoods, in the truest sense of the word, sprang up literally overnight.
But more was happening. Information was exchanged. Values were formed and shared. Communication skills were honed. The compromises and adjustments demanded by coexistence were composed. The bonds of community and commonality were forged – in a single day!
How strange and wonderful. All the qualities that define the experience of communal man were emerging from the gloom of dead air-conditioners and TV sets.
Sadly, this reconnecting with our humanity ended abruptly when electricity was restored and people could go back to their cool, dark, television-illuminated homes.
Such is the power of air conditioning. But the larger draw is television, what family counselor and syndicated columnist John Rosemond calls the biggest threat to family cohesion ever. Rosemond correctly describes the behavior of watching television as a solitary and isolating act that separates people.
And that’s a relatively benign part of the process – what’s worse is this: The act of watching television is passive, an anesthesia for cognition, essentially transforming the brain into Jell-O.
Now, the internet looms as televisions evil progeny, a final desocializing technology that threatens to finish what writer Harlan Ellison’s “glass teat” started, to keep us all separated from any meaningful or realistic interaction with one another.
Never mind the deleterious health effects brought about by sitting on your butt all day, staring at a cathode ray tube. The Mass Mind behind the internet offers something even the fizzy brain candy of television cannot: the illusion of participating in a big, happy family.
Net proponents envision a global web of interconnectedness, where everybody and everything is equal – children, Nobel laureates, serial killers, rock stars – a global family to occupy the quaint global village we will become.
What they don’t mention is the fact that this “global village” isn’t real.
It’s a fantasy, an electronic simulation, a substitute for corporeality where people “interact” through a filter of anonymity, which allows for all manner of strange perceptions and behaviors. Reality is as elastic as your processor and modem will allow.
Is that we are stampeding to achieve? The cultural psychosis of leading pseudo-lives in an ersatz world, where reality unfolds around us, unnoticed and untended?
Next, I’d like to talk about the future of the net, and why YOU should tune out and turn off, right now.
Until the next hurricane. …
The column was published in the Northwest Florida Daily News on October 30, 1996 and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .