Sep 09
6
Digital Cocooning…
A few years ago Al Gore turned his slide show into a movie and subsequently received an Oscar.
The debate about climate change got into full swing, and then along came the climate change deniers and the population of the world got terribly confused. Suddenly they didn't know what to believe.
And when the human race is confronted by confusion it generally does the same thing every time. Nothing.
It wants to wait and see.
Actually the human race has started to do something. Unfortunately what Tom has been describing in some of his recent blogs is what it has resorted to: Digital Cocooning.
Most people actually realize that things are in meltdown mode.
They realize that climate change is here. They don't need to go very far to figure that out. They see that trees are coming into blossom too early. They experience the reality of bush fires.
A lot of people have also been hit by the GFC. Some have lost their savings – invested in get rich quick schemes that have gone off the rails – like Storm Financial or Madoff.
A lot are looking around at what the government is not doing and wondering why we elect politicians at all when they appear to be all of the same cloth regardless of what party they belong to.
And a lot of them aspire to get off the treadmill, but without losing their livelihoods. They want that simpler life of growing their own…
So its not surprising really that they are all flocking to play timewasting social network virtual farmer is it?
Pretty tragic, though, when you think about it.
People just want things to remain as they are. I remember someone telling me several years ago, when I was running a public company, that the market is addicted to good news, so only release good news and the market will treat you well.
Easy to say, and hard to pull off.
The public meanwhile has been brainwashed by modern entertainment.
The public has learned from the movies: When there is an unexploded bomb, it doesn't matter which wire you cut because it will always be the right one. When there is a crisis, the hero will arrive and solve the problem just before downtown LA/London etc is destroyed. Everyone lives happily ever after.
The problem with this approach is that no one gets on with working toward fixing the problem. Al Gore's message was that we all need to do little things that we can in order to start fixing the problem. The problem is that for most people brought up on Hollywood entertainment, the news is something that happens to other people.
We actually do need to do little things on our own and try to influence all of our peers to do so too.
Real life is not the movies. Real life is not games.
On the other hand, it may be that if the world really does want to retire into their digital cocoons, then those of us who are awake should try to give the people what they want – more virtual nothingness, but get them to pay for it, and then use the money to do good things…
Would that work, I wonder?