Hello fellow yellow bloggers! I am a junior AEM major and IS minor from
The internet craze is what baffles me. We all work on 1000 different tasks at once. We have mastered the alt-tab keys of our keyboard switching from the Excel sheet, to the Facebook profiles we constantly stalk, to our Cornell webmail, to our youtube videos. I guess this is still normal- we have learned to multi-task. But when we come across such an article: “Is this man cheating on his wife”- (go ahead: check it out!) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118670164592393622.html?mod=mostpop we stop and think, where are we headed? Are we getting so engrossed in this internet addiction, that we are supplanting our relationships and familial ties to this fake made-up world? Is this online world better than real life? I mean, people in the “Second Life” as they call it, don’t get fat, sagging or gray. Your spouse can’t compete with that, right?
This “Second Life” internet phenomenon is part of the metaworld environment. We have a 60 year old man engrossed in an imaginative world that contains the most vivid and absorbing graphics for 10 straight hours. The computer screen comes alive with little avatars, and this man’s new wife is this hot, sexy, women of 28 who does not age one day. Quite a bargain, right? Wrong…the 60 year olds wife has just been widowed. Makes you wonder where we are headed.
1 comment:
Hi Heena!
My name is Katherine. It’s really great that you love to garden. I also have a small garden next to my house that my grandmother and I tend. We recently planted cherry tomatoes, parsley, peppers, and a lot of other edible greens over the summer. Although I’ve never been speed boating, I absolutely love watching Broadway shows. Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Hairspray, and The Lion King are some of the many that I have seen so far and I hope to see many more.
I also read the article “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?” on the WSJ a few weeks ago when it first came out. I find it truly amazing how some people can get so caught up on the Internet, in its many different online spaces that we’ve been discussing in class, that they fail to see the distinction between their “real” lives and their virtual lives on the web. If I were to analyze why these ordinary people become so engrossed in their lives on the web, my research would most likely indicate that it is because they are living out their fantasy lives on the web. Hence, we have people who will abandon their real lives with their real wives, real job and real responsibilities to live out their virtual lives on the Internet where "nobody gets fat, nobody gets gray." (WSJ)
An interesting fact to note, a couple of years ago there have been a couple of reported deaths that were found to be caused by the addiction of these individuals to computer games.
“South Korean police said today that a man has died after an 86-hour gaming marathon. The incident occurred at an Internet café… where the man, who was unemployed, had been "virtually glued" to a computer since Friday, skipping sleep and meals. The man collapsed near the café's counter and was later found dead in the restroom. Many Internet cafés… are open 24 hours a day.” (Associated Press)
Often, people can get so easily consumed on the Internet that it becomes an addiction they cannot live without. I believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed more seriously.
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