Winky
Well-Known Member
The Human Condition
by Todd Brendan Fahey
January 1, 2005
I am sitting in South Korea, at a PC-room terminal in a PC-parlor in which maybe 50 South Koreans--men, boys and some women--are playing video games. The guys are hard at it--firing their machine guns at the gamut of targets, above which are the refrains: "Give me another shot!" and "Good to go!" The chicks are either playing whatever twinkie/cute games they seem to like, or else are chatting with friends over a popular digital chat-mechanism.
"It's all good." That's what the "kids" like to say, out West. But as I sit here, close to turning 40, I realize that it's not "all good." Apart from the dirt-cheap price of broadband Internet access at these PC-rooms (US$5, for a 10-hour stay online; one can fall asleep in a chair and wake up 24hrs later, and the desk clerk will have turned off your machine and won't charge the crashed-out zombie an extra cent)...apart from the good value and lightning-speed access, there lies the disturbing phenomenon that nobody here is doing anything productive--aside from perhaps the 'net-chatting aspect, which is as much a social function as is talking.
Nothing is being created. Of the fifty Korean brains that reside in this parlor currently, forty-five are acting as pure consumers. I can walk around and survey the activities of everyone here, and not one person is writing code or designing a Web site or, seemingly, writing an article for a magazine or online publication. Every screen, aside from those of the chatters, is clogged with the same sorts of action games. It's this way in every PC-room in South Korea (and I've lived here for nearly 6 years, and deliberately don't have a home-connection; so I'm the resident foreign expert of South Korean PC-room lifestyle and on-screen activity).
And so it occurs to me that, despite the generally high-IQ and talent and social freedom and economic progress of South Koreans and of South Korea, generally: A lot of people are wasting their lives, sucking up others' products like overgrown amoebas. And I doubt this is a purely South Korean phenomenon. Most humans, it seems, don't create. Most of we, as a species, simply absorb.
Like kittens, we are content with our twice-daily saucer of milk and our little bowl of food; occasionally, we seek some sort of entertainment and bat our paw at the little toy hanging on the ceiling of the little house in which we either sleep or f*ck. & that's it. For the rest of our lives.
Meanwhile, the electricity used to power the computers and to generate the light with which to see the keystrokes (or action heroes) upon the screens in front of our faces; the games and chat-devices that draw us to these places; the music listened to over the speakers or through headphones; the vehicles driven to and from; the heating systems in wintertime and air conditioners or fans in the summertime, elstwise it'd be too uncomfortable to even be here... All are created by someone else, and without whom you would otherwise have no reason for being.
And you want to bitch and moan about how the "corporations own everything" or "how government is unfair" or "takes so much and gives nothing in return" or "infringes on your rights to privacy"?
Sorry. That luxury is owned by someone else. With each passing nanosecond, whilst guzzling and gobbling and suckling from and using and enjoying, or complaining about, others' products and devices--and having given nothing back--, you've abdicated your role as a human.
You've been purchased. Like it.
Welcome, slave.
by Todd Brendan Fahey
January 1, 2005
I am sitting in South Korea, at a PC-room terminal in a PC-parlor in which maybe 50 South Koreans--men, boys and some women--are playing video games. The guys are hard at it--firing their machine guns at the gamut of targets, above which are the refrains: "Give me another shot!" and "Good to go!" The chicks are either playing whatever twinkie/cute games they seem to like, or else are chatting with friends over a popular digital chat-mechanism.
"It's all good." That's what the "kids" like to say, out West. But as I sit here, close to turning 40, I realize that it's not "all good." Apart from the dirt-cheap price of broadband Internet access at these PC-rooms (US$5, for a 10-hour stay online; one can fall asleep in a chair and wake up 24hrs later, and the desk clerk will have turned off your machine and won't charge the crashed-out zombie an extra cent)...apart from the good value and lightning-speed access, there lies the disturbing phenomenon that nobody here is doing anything productive--aside from perhaps the 'net-chatting aspect, which is as much a social function as is talking.
Nothing is being created. Of the fifty Korean brains that reside in this parlor currently, forty-five are acting as pure consumers. I can walk around and survey the activities of everyone here, and not one person is writing code or designing a Web site or, seemingly, writing an article for a magazine or online publication. Every screen, aside from those of the chatters, is clogged with the same sorts of action games. It's this way in every PC-room in South Korea (and I've lived here for nearly 6 years, and deliberately don't have a home-connection; so I'm the resident foreign expert of South Korean PC-room lifestyle and on-screen activity).
And so it occurs to me that, despite the generally high-IQ and talent and social freedom and economic progress of South Koreans and of South Korea, generally: A lot of people are wasting their lives, sucking up others' products like overgrown amoebas. And I doubt this is a purely South Korean phenomenon. Most humans, it seems, don't create. Most of we, as a species, simply absorb.
Like kittens, we are content with our twice-daily saucer of milk and our little bowl of food; occasionally, we seek some sort of entertainment and bat our paw at the little toy hanging on the ceiling of the little house in which we either sleep or f*ck. & that's it. For the rest of our lives.
Meanwhile, the electricity used to power the computers and to generate the light with which to see the keystrokes (or action heroes) upon the screens in front of our faces; the games and chat-devices that draw us to these places; the music listened to over the speakers or through headphones; the vehicles driven to and from; the heating systems in wintertime and air conditioners or fans in the summertime, elstwise it'd be too uncomfortable to even be here... All are created by someone else, and without whom you would otherwise have no reason for being.
And you want to bitch and moan about how the "corporations own everything" or "how government is unfair" or "takes so much and gives nothing in return" or "infringes on your rights to privacy"?
Sorry. That luxury is owned by someone else. With each passing nanosecond, whilst guzzling and gobbling and suckling from and using and enjoying, or complaining about, others' products and devices--and having given nothing back--, you've abdicated your role as a human.
You've been purchased. Like it.
Welcome, slave.
