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I have noticed that allot of people are totally and completely oblivious to their surroundings. Too much attention to gadgets and fashion is killing our natural instinct to do what is natural and healthy for us. Instead of taking the kids fishing or going for a nice family stroll through the fields we are as a nation obsessed with the “non world”, the world that doesn’t exist in real life, and although it does have good points such as the sharing of knowledge, the cyber world also has its bad. This probably makes me a hypocrite I hear you say, but the difference here is the fact that I am speaking and communicating with you. Not a virtual pet and the thought of chatting up a virtual girlfriend is totally ridiculous. I mean, how’s she going to cook my dinner or iron my shirt? Perhaps we should go out in virtual clothes and be done with it.
 Computer games are a major influence in the lives of a lot of people. I’m not suggesting that these individuals are bad, or idiots, because I have myself have unwittingly fallen into the trap of spending a whole weekend wasting away in front of the games consol, and gone back to work on the Monday wondering what the hell happened! I can imagine that the games addiction that has swept the planet is just another distraction to real life and is equally as good as drugs or alcohol for an immediate escape from reality.
The video games that are highly addictive I believe remove you from reality, and give a craving to take you back to the non world. The fascination for the non world becomes enormous, browsing through web sites as if you are there and exploring a place which isn’t real. Soon the craze will become so huge that individuals will find it difficult to differentiate between what is real and what is not. Exploring through a game level and memorizing the layout like it is your own front room, and never wanting to leave.
Virtual holidays aren’t far off now, many films have depicted the idea and the thought of strapping on a helmet and sitting in a chair, and to be taken to a place where you can do whatever you like to whoever you want is a frightening prospect. Although “virtual work” doesn’t sound so bad.
Is life really that bad? Well for many, yes it is. The pressure on teens to go out and be sociable, or to be destructive depending on which crowd they think they should be hanging with, costs money, and is all about being cool and living an unrealistic dream of having the wealth of the celebrities that are in our faces everywhere we look. I don’t know anyone under the age of thirteen that I am aware of who isn’t in possession of a mobile phone, and these couldn’t possibly be any old phones they more than likely have to be the latest touch screen, internet surfing, mp3 playing, photo taking, video recording laser guided pint pulling, drug weighing, car immobilizer disabling works of art. It must be the latest model too, because everyone seems to know if you have an old phone many kids would be embarrassed. Plus at that age there is no way that you would go out in the same outfit more than once and it seems that a different phone is needed with every outfit. As a wise friend said to me once, “people are judged by the style of their phone”, and it is true, and sad. Plus if you don’t give your children what they want, you are classed as a bad parent.
 Things don’t change as you grow older, which is more to the point. Obviously many of you who are reading this are doing so on your own computer whilst maybe your partner is on their laptop looking at something highly important like the latest deals at P.C.World, or online shopping for clothes. It is probable that one of you will buy something you don’t need by the end of the month just because the item is supposedly cool or the media attention the item has been given makes you think that it is needed. The Ipod for instance. I had looked into getting one of these myself not long ago. Someone I knew showed me their one and touch screen activation, fantastic music play back and video storage; you know what I am talking about you probably own one. However, the more I thought about what I would actually use it for, the less I wanted one. This would have been, I can honestly say, the worst and most useless item of the year. It would have been chucked in the drawer and brought out as a reminder of my own personal weakness.
The world is going bonkers for this stuff and we will become bonkers soon if we haven’t already. The computer should be used as an extension to the human brain, not an escape from it. Computerisation at the moment is killing off the brain as we know it and reducing the nation to a bunch of cyber junkies wanting that next fix, and the government are encouraging it!
Gibbo.
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