My name is DJTECH, and I’m a computer geek. I realize it is a twelve step program to overcome my computer junky behavior. Step one is why I’m writing this, to recognize and accept that I have a problem. I don’t know if I will ever be cured of my technology addiction but there are twelve steps for Technologists Anonymous. That said my aspirations to join technologist anonymous didn’t really work out. Apparently my addiction to technology and the internet goes much deeper … perhaps an intervention and being sent to an isolated island is the only answer that will ever work.
I am fascinated by the World Wide Web, the social interaction and viral swarming that occurs in cyberspace. I spent seven years working for one of the top PC security firms in the world, mostly diagnosing events caused or manipulated by social engineering. However that was the 1990’s … the internet was new, now the medium contains 10,000% more people (or subjects) than say 1997. The test bed and integration into our daily lives has factored beyond control … shit look how many people camped out for days for even a simple piece of technology that accesses the web like the iPhone. We truly have become an obsessive compulsive internet culture … me included.
I enjoy the randomness (yet not true anonymousness) of the internet, and the ability to virtually touch the lives of complete and utter strangers … the more the better. Sad but true, I live and thrive on internet traffic, the more visitors, page views, blog reads the better. I start my day everyday by generating WebTrends reports and analytical Google charts of all the people I touched the lives of. They have no idea who I am, and I have no idea who they are (other than perhaps an IP address) but it thrills me to know somehow on an alternate plane people find my content somewhat interesting (?) What does this all mean … who knows, but thru the little outlets of the internet people visit my zany world.
My cyber-addictions and paranoid anxieties are rooted very deeply in the DNA that makes me who I am today. I spent seven of my early career development years in Silicon Valley. While I was one of the allegedly lucky ones who supposedly was in the “right place” at the “right time” I have the deep scars that a child actor gets when they grow up and realize the life around them is nothing like the shell that surrounded them during the developmental years. Much like those child actors my sense of ethics, and right and wrong were swayed by less than wholesome individuals.
The computer industry as a whole has become multi-trillion dollar business since the early 1980s. Back then it was considered a phase or blip in the extended industrial revolution, nobody really anticipated that there in fact would be a complete technology revolution that would surpass the wealth generated by prior evolutions. Even my parents at the time just thought computers and the internet was a phase I was going through … and sometime I’d go back to school and get a real job. Well here is two decades later … no sign of the internet going away and we are an infatuated habitual internet culture.
Then there is the whole social networking aspect that takes place on the “information super-highway” (sorry old school name in case Al Gore was reading along) … MySpace, FaceBook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo, Google. Millions of people are swarming, storming and norming an idea or concept building & sculpting a whole subculture. Now you can be aligned with hundreds of other people in the click of a button that share your fascination with afghan knitting, patch quilting or more devious desires like women who are into men with one testicle … whatever your warped mind craves, there is a group for you somewhere easily accessible via the tubes and wires we collectively call the internet.
So how deep does the rabbit hole go? Well honestly it seems each day the vast depths of cyberspace seem to expand faster than the universe after the big-bang, it’s really just a matter of how much time you have to explore every nook, cranny & corner of the immenseness.
So what’s next in this insanely unpredictable industry where a search engine company can be trading publicly at over $400 per share, yet old school search directories like the Yellow Pages and that other “Yellow Book” is lucky enough if people even open them. With huge printing costs … you have to wonder is their really a point to printed telephone books anymore? … What a waste of natural resources. Perhaps the phone book companies will RIP with the photo-mats of the world, or at least the photo development companies that didn’t take a hint that digital photography is here to stay … adapt or die … it’s the technology survival of the fittest.
