The Information Age, Incomplete
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL9000, a computer in charge of piloting a ship and monitoring and regulating the life systems of a hibernating spaceship crew, winds up killing all but one member of that crew. It turns out that HAL9000, built as a sentient machine, received incomplete information that also conflicted with his original programming, and became paranoid.
We are now in the so-called Information Age, where everything is within our fingertips. We are able to receive any information we need, do anything we please, and especially in America and relative to the rest of the world, acquire nearly anything we want.
But have we received complete instructions to guide our actions?
Instructions are passed from generation to generation, from those who have learned from their mistakes, to those who hopefully will make less mistakes than their predecessors. This process, theoretically, will result in each subsequent generation improving on what the previous generation has built.
But if the method of transferring instructions becomes damaged, broken, or conflicted, then the subsequent generation will, like HAL9000, go koo-koo.
Worse yet, if the source of the original instructions was damaged to begin with, any subsequent instruction coming out of that source will be damaged.
Translation: if the correct instructions of a parent are not properly transferred to a child, then the prospect of improvement becomes damaged. Worse yet, if the parent was damaged to begin with, any subsequent instructions coming out of that parent will most likely be damaged.
If the parent communicates what is originally undamaged instructions, but the method of communication is incomplete or damaged, then the instructions become damaged.
If the parent properly communicates but the child is unable or unwilling to receive the instructions properly, the instructions become useless.
If a society disregards instructions from a previous generation, the current generation has no choice but to create new instructions from nothing.
A current generation that creates new instructions from nothing is like a computer that has to program itself.
It cannot.
We are living in an age where children, the new, empty computers, rule the world, are catered to by the media and advertising, and given tools with which they are able to program themselves, however they see fit. The children are told that they don’t have to listen to previous instructions (rules, guidelines, parental discretions), that they can do anything they want, when they want, how they want, and there is no criteria for success or failure (because that would be judgemental). There is no before and there doesn’t need to be an after. Instructions, after all, is the antithesis of freedom.
If HAL9000 were given these instructions, or lack thereof, we would not be surprised if he became paranoid and killed everyone on board. So why should we expect any different from our children?
One Reply to “The Information Age, Incomplete”
Oh my God that hits the nail in the head. What the did you eat for dinner?I see it too, and that may be a reason why we are imploding.When I arrived in the bubble we call America, some 18 years ago, I was asked how you could tell the difference between the two places, Bolivia and the bubble.I’m beginning to find clues to answer that.In Bolivia, when you see adults walking with children on the street, adults look a bit rested and, not happy, but sort of content. The children walking with them, look kind of quiet and subdued, not really interested in making a fuss; some may argue, they look sad or repressed. In the bubble however, it’s quite different, kids look extremely happy, jumping off the wall (or on top of cars) really going nutts like monkeys with sharp objects, the adults on the other hand, look miserable, depressed, worried as if the weight of the universe is on their shoulders. Maybe they do have that much load on them. Maybe those kids just had their sneaker bars.In other words, outside the bubble, happy adults, sad children, inside the bubble, happy children, sad adults. This may be part of the weird theory that claims flushed toilette water circles the other way in the southern hemisphere. Maybe this is a supporting argument to the “world is upside down” theory my dad talked about.