Introduction
This blog is a blog that tries to capture my thinking about the intersection between existential anxiety and technology, specifically the internet.
It is a research, ruminative blog--one in which I detail my own ideas, while also making comments on what I read on a daily basis.
If I were close to making a thesis about this subject, I might take a stab at it by stating the obvious: "Technology acts as a bulwark against existential anxiety". This seems patently obvious though, so it seems that I must dig a little deeper if I want to unearth something worth reading.
I have long contemplated this subject, so I think that it is a feeling that I don't think will die away. I have always been interested in technology. When I was younger, I wanted to be a computer programmer, even though I hadn't the slightest idea what one actually does. I knew that I wanted to work with computers--that they were the cutting edge, offering a gateway to a happy life.
My existential insecurities about my life must have started at a young age. My earliest memory is from the 1st or 2nd grade. I would desire a "time-out", a space to openly reflect on what was taking place, i.e., life. I needed to extract myself from the flow of life in order to really consider what was, in fact, "flowing". I prompted my friend Alistair Nee to talk with me in a private location about our lives unfolding on the playground. I remember, even that young, being concerned with understanding what all of this playing, laughing, tagging, all really meant...I feared that somehow if we didn't sit down and talk about it, it would be as if it really didn't happen. I needed to know that it--life in elementary school--was actually taking place, and that someone, my friend, was observing what I was too. In a word, I was looking for the corroboration of facts--my life was happening. This, I remember, might have been my first time reflection on what it all meant--and my first attempt to hear another person's story of the life that matched mine, but was wholly different.
The blog name came to be with the mixture of the two ideas. I think that existentialism in the root of all our human concerns. Nothing gets below this existential layer. You might even call it the existential mantle of the earth--the hot center of the earth. I was always amazed by the simplicty of our earthly layers--that all there was to this massive world was layer upon layer, and then at the center a treasure-like mantle, red hot and trapped by miles of earthly crust.
The onlife part comes from reading the book The Fourth Revolution, a book about the dismantling of our human life. The book tracks the four major revolutions of our life, starting with 1. The recognition that earth is not the center of the universe. 2. The science to support that man is not a god-created entity, but a creation formed by an evolution, make monkees our ancestors 3. Freud's work that showed the first steps in illuminating the unconscious mind--showing that our actions are not always conscious. 4. The way technology can throw us out of the operational loop of life--i.e., we really don't need to be there if everything in life can smoothly run its course by the automation of trained robots. The fourth revolution seems the most startling, but that may because it seems the most visceral--the first three, are what we say is a learned history of man. I didn't actually grow up believing that the earth was the center of the universe, so therefore this revolution triggers no intense panic.
It is a research, ruminative blog--one in which I detail my own ideas, while also making comments on what I read on a daily basis.
If I were close to making a thesis about this subject, I might take a stab at it by stating the obvious: "Technology acts as a bulwark against existential anxiety". This seems patently obvious though, so it seems that I must dig a little deeper if I want to unearth something worth reading.
I have long contemplated this subject, so I think that it is a feeling that I don't think will die away. I have always been interested in technology. When I was younger, I wanted to be a computer programmer, even though I hadn't the slightest idea what one actually does. I knew that I wanted to work with computers--that they were the cutting edge, offering a gateway to a happy life.
My existential insecurities about my life must have started at a young age. My earliest memory is from the 1st or 2nd grade. I would desire a "time-out", a space to openly reflect on what was taking place, i.e., life. I needed to extract myself from the flow of life in order to really consider what was, in fact, "flowing". I prompted my friend Alistair Nee to talk with me in a private location about our lives unfolding on the playground. I remember, even that young, being concerned with understanding what all of this playing, laughing, tagging, all really meant...I feared that somehow if we didn't sit down and talk about it, it would be as if it really didn't happen. I needed to know that it--life in elementary school--was actually taking place, and that someone, my friend, was observing what I was too. In a word, I was looking for the corroboration of facts--my life was happening. This, I remember, might have been my first time reflection on what it all meant--and my first attempt to hear another person's story of the life that matched mine, but was wholly different.
The blog name came to be with the mixture of the two ideas. I think that existentialism in the root of all our human concerns. Nothing gets below this existential layer. You might even call it the existential mantle of the earth--the hot center of the earth. I was always amazed by the simplicty of our earthly layers--that all there was to this massive world was layer upon layer, and then at the center a treasure-like mantle, red hot and trapped by miles of earthly crust.
The onlife part comes from reading the book The Fourth Revolution, a book about the dismantling of our human life. The book tracks the four major revolutions of our life, starting with 1. The recognition that earth is not the center of the universe. 2. The science to support that man is not a god-created entity, but a creation formed by an evolution, make monkees our ancestors 3. Freud's work that showed the first steps in illuminating the unconscious mind--showing that our actions are not always conscious. 4. The way technology can throw us out of the operational loop of life--i.e., we really don't need to be there if everything in life can smoothly run its course by the automation of trained robots. The fourth revolution seems the most startling, but that may because it seems the most visceral--the first three, are what we say is a learned history of man. I didn't actually grow up believing that the earth was the center of the universe, so therefore this revolution triggers no intense panic.
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