The Great Indoors

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Lately (and again) I find myself guilty of escapism.

There are e-mails from caring friends that I've left unopened, but I can tell from what I see of them in my inbox that they're in the category of small bright things in this dark dark world -- and not wanting to be reminded of the dark dark world, I just don't want to look.

Instead I visit other realms, chief among them The Sims 2 for PC and Gran Turismo 4 on PlayStation 2. While I'm playing God, creating and controlling Sim-ulated people, and when I'm racing cars I could never afford in events I could never attend, I can forget...

Forget about politics and the politicians themselves. Forget about what capitalism has done to this world. Forget how hard it seems it will be to fix everything. Forget that a major part of the problem is the LCD, lowest common demonitator of human intelligence -- I keep having to remind myself that the majority don't have the capacity to think for themselves, and that's seriously depressing...

No, I disable my connection and load the disk, or in another room I insert a different disk and grab the controller. Hours of fun can be had.

Should I feel guilty? Oughtn't I be out in the world (or at least online) trying to make a difference? Or am I merely preparing myself for a future in which gaming is how we occupy our minds, when everything is running smoothly so long as we're all in our respective saucers in orbit and not down on the planet damaging the ecosystem?

My son coined a new term: "disencouraging". To me it means, instead of a youthful alternative to "discouraging", a negative effect on the ability to be encouraged. This, to my mind, puts a mirror up to the state of Humanity. There is so much to put us DOWN that it's hard to see the UPside of things.

Upside is, once the technology is available we'll all be doing as we please, without ecological impact. We will have left the planet, orbiting or zooming off somewhere in everything from motherships to space yachts. Everything we could need or want will be either replicated or simulated. Work? Computers and robotics will take care of all the actual work, except where we want to do it ourselves, and except for those of us who wish to maintain the computers and robotics or get our hands dirty doing things they could take care of.

There will be room for a segment of the population to live like the Amish or similar agrarian societies, because we as a species need to keep in touch with the skills necessary to flourish without advanced technology, should advanced technology fail.

Meanwhile our personal environments will be as fantastic as we want, or as realistic as we want, or actually real -- and even our real environments can be rich with objects either salvaged or replicated, or even brought to existence out of our own original thoughts. Good thing, too -- because the preservation of this planet (and therefore the survival of our species) demands our removal. Cooped up in a flying Winnebago or in quarters aboard a floating city, we'll need to be able to entertain ourselves...

Which reminds me: Another escape I have is writing an as-yet-untitled science fiction short about a man who has spent ten years alone in space...


Phil Smith
March 23 + 30, Twenty-Oh-Seven
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