Life as an Artificial Lifeform

that puts the world into a virtual slave mode. An article over at the information clearinghouse is talking about TV and the problems it causes in society. It sums up very strongly how I feel about TV - why my home is TV free and I put everyone to hell who wants to introduce TV in here. Interestingly enough they also cite games in the article to make none-thinking, "living in a virtual world" couch potatoes out of yourself. This part I partially agree. As TV games can be as addictive and virtual as TV. Games in the contrary give interaction and most games played addictivly today are online games that force you to interact with other humans - yes still in a virtual world but still somehow humans. So reading Joi Itos comment recently about how he "lost the fun wrting on his blog - maybe because he is playing too much World of Warcraft" it might even lend credibility to the fact that games do posses the same mind dumbing druggy power - even on highly intelligent people (who might even not admitting how much it affect them - talking about me personally here as well - I just tossed away that Warcraft III game because I could see a similar effect on me).
Games or not the much bigger problem at the moment is TV. Ralph Nader is quoted in the article to have said that "90% of television is commercial". That makes 90% of television purely entertainment without anything gained for personal experience or education. Given that a normal western person watches about 2-4 hours a day thats a huge amount of time lost to virtual banalities in his/her life. Ones television was pipped as a tool for education and I still think that it would be a great tool for education if it would be used as such.

Those who are seduced and mesmerized by television are not likely to make trouble. They are not going to question corporate America’s version of reality and make waves for the status quo. Television is junk food for the mind that leads to morbid mental obesity. The result is impaired mental function. It stifles free thought and inhibits human potential. Nothing in the history of civilization has been more responsible for dumbing down the American public than commercial television. Television numbs the mind and impoverishes the spirit. It is an essential tool of the corporations that have hijacked the American government and led to the commodification of everything from forests to human labor. Without the commanding and highly addictive drug of television, America’s powerful military industrial complex, with its ambitions for world domination, would be rendered moot.