A 96 minute PBS documentary on our shiny modern minds (I'll ruin it for you; we're fucking bonkers and a little broken.)

Yeah. Yeah. No, I just got it. Yeah. She's fine. Okay, listen, I was in the middle of Sally's Spa, though, so... you know... I've gotta go.



I love the idea of Patrick Stewart standing in a queue somewhere pecking at his iPhone, identical in behavior to those around him, reading Shakespeare. Quietly, to himself, but perfectly enunciated; "Marvelous. The Internet. What wonders!"

Digital_Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier
Watch this movie! Please.

I always feel like a leper for my position on technology. In case you didn't know; I don't use e-mail, the phone, and Facebook. I do have a problem with blog addiction (my own most certainly included), game addiction, and general motivational issues. Access to the Internet exacerbates this. I get alarmed only by my difficulty in sitting down at a PC without being able to not open a web browser. A bit of self-esteem issues, some anxiety, occasionally, but I fail to see any reason to connect any of those to technological environments.

Something like this makes me think that in 15 years, when the backlash is in full effect, my lifestyle might make some kind of perverse sense. I'll have become entirely like an alien from another era. I imagine it will feel lonely. Hopefully the older generation will be equally spiteful and unwilling to accede.

If I were a professor I don't think I would be able to handle laptops in class. It would be hard, and a few of the kids would hate me.

But the phones would be worse. No phones, ever. No beeping or vibrating, ever. No texting, ever. No exceptions outside of death, bedbugs, or eviction.

This is a great film. Well-executed and deeply engrossing, pertinent, and terrifying.