Ludite Morning

I went snowboarding yesterday. A million muscles cried out in pain, and then were silenced.

Thank God for ibuprofen.

It was damn good fun, but today is probably going to be extra lazy. Writing is, in my opinion, a difficult task on a good day. But it will be extra difficult to do today. My mind is lazy, hampered by pain killers and caffeine, among other things necessary to make movable in the day.

I wonder about that as I get older. How much artificial support am I going to need to get by? Pain killers and anti-depressants now, but what about the future?

There are a lot of science fiction authors who will have people implanted with a variety of devices. These aren't your pacemakers, but things to enhance one's quality of life. The strangest of which are implants for connecting people directly to machines. This is one idea that I find my self thinking Luditic thoughts. That makes the world to close to the inner workings of ones mind.

Look at the state of the Internet now. Even though it has been mainstream for ten years now, it is still a backward frontier. There are pioneers, bandits, entrepreneurs and pirates. It's generally lawless. Not some place that one would want to just open up their mind. Imagine needing a firewall built into your brain.

I'm not railing against open-mindedness, mind you.

A lot of infrastructure will be needed before we can really move to this level. Currently, it is just a representation of data, put together in such a way that it is understandable and navigable. It is in no way a reflection of reality, nor a real place for communication. The internet has to become more of a construct of reality then what it is today.

We need to enhance the way we use the internet to communicate. Email, instant messaging, chat aren't quite there yet. They lack the visual cues that complete human interaction. Face-to-face communication is both more informative and more satisfying.

Maybe I'm old fashioned. I've tried these new types of communication. I still prefer a phone call over email, and face-to-face over the phone. I need that interaction. I need that emotional connection. Weird need, considering how much of an introvert I am.

I don't have any solutions to suggest, at least not ones that have already been thought up in the universities and corporate research labs. It's going to be interesting to watch how things evolve. Maybe I'll shake off my ludite nature and welcome it.