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WE ARE, IN CYBERSPACE (Part 1) |
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Written by Aaron Darc
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Wednesday, 13 September 2006 |
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Page 3 of 5
But these tensions are how we develop, emotionally and pscyhologically. They force us to develop mechanics and skills of handling situations, navigating the world around us, of being human. When we’re older, we still face the very same tensions we did when we were young – but we react differently, and they often don’t seem like very big deals, any more. We handle life – maybe not with utmost success, all the time, but with increasing durability and skill, overall.
What happens when you’ve never had to face such a tension and deal with it in that way? What happens when you’ve never had to navigate the social politics of conflict, because every time you find yourself in a position of conflict you either run away, or can be as volatile as you like (knowing there are no “real” consequences)? What happens when you need to deal with an interaction with another human being, in an issue and dynamic that cannot be controlled and engaged through two lines of text, with a “block user” option, and no way of lying about yourself on a profile? What the hell happens when you have to deal with an emotion there is no corresponding emoticon for?
Well, you CAN’T deal with it, of course. And if you can make sure of it, you won’t. You cannot operate out of the simplicity of cyber-interaction, and the safety of anonyminity and psuedo-reality. Cyberspace is stupid. That’s the point of it. And it’s raising stupid kids. In many cases, not only do they not want to think – they can’t. The longer they exist in a pseudo-reality, the greater they are dysfunctionalised in actual reality, as the emotional experience of actual social navigation that is required to develop such capacity, becomes increasingly foreign.
How was their day? Good ☺
Who are they? Don’t ask them. They don’t know.
I became increasingly frustrated, but for a while, this only drove me to engage harder with cyberspace, determined to make some of it, to stumble upon that elusive opportunity I had yet to find on it.
The irony of this was that this drive came partly not from my experience of cyberspace, but my experience of reality. I initially underestimated the connection, the symbiosis, of the two. I expected something from my adventures in cyberspace, and to have such an expectation, it means there must be a need that expects, searches, to be met. I don’t think I’m unique in this way, as a representative of the genration who did not grow up with internet. There is no “expectation” with the cyberkids. It just “is”. They’re not looking to get something out of it - they’re in it, existing.
Looking back, it was a clever way I tried to navigate my new surroundings – being a uni student in his later 20s, in an undergraduate degree, filled with teenagers. The academics, as mentioned, mostly annoyed me, and I just couldn’t seem to successfully navigate my interaction and place amongst my fellow classmates. As someone who had always been capable in manipulating my social surroundings to my design, that came as quite a shock to me! I made a mistake. Aaron Goes Back To Uni, as it had played out in the fantasies and visualisations that led me to act out this story, turned out to be just that – fantasies. It was very different. And I couldn’t quite figure out why.
These kids were aliens to me. Here I was, sitting in my psych classes, furiously debating ideology - rocking up to classes, so hungry for the intellectual experience of it all. And here were these 18 year olds, who were busy talking about their latest mobile phone ring, and cool software packages they had found, and looking at me like they’d just seen some new, frighening breed of animal that nobody had imagined existed. The thinking animal. Run! Run for your life!
The connection from these kids to the cyberspace they came from (at first, having no idea the answers that lied in finally making that connection) was something any contemporary university student will be familiar with – Blackboard.
Blackboard is basically a website that corresponds with your subject, and subjects increasingly use them. Each student punches his or her number in, and gains access to the place where a frightening portion of their education will take place. Papers are no longer handed out in class, they are downloaded (this all saves the uni money, of course); monthly assesment exams are taken online, without any human being needing to be part of the marking process; tutorials are enrolled in, without even knowing the name of the teacher taking the class. And throughout all, you are nothing but a number. I was C316095. |
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