about
We are becoming obsessed by technology. Childhood is increasingly being spent in front of a screen playing computer games, rather than playing real games and interacting with real friends. Isn't it ironic that football computer games become bestsellers, whilst childhood obesity is reaching near epidemic proportions due to a lack of physical activity in kids? Many of them seem happy to idle away hours catering for the needs of fantasy families in games like "The Sims", yet are likely to eventually leave home unable to cook anything for themselves except a Pot Noodle. And as the Playstation generation has grown up, so computer virtual reality games are now being targeted at adults. There are on-line games in which you can invent a computer generated alter-ego, which lives in a virtual city full of the alter-egos of other computer users. You pay real money to buy virtual status symbols from these other addicts, so that you can be top dog in a world that doesn't really exist - far removed from your real life of a dead end job and no social skills. Where is this going to end? We are increasingly living in a dysfunctional society in which people don't engage with the community around them. Meanwhile, software corporations are making a fortune by recreating a virtual copy of the society they're helping to destroy, and then selling it back to us. Let's not buy into it.
lyrics
The race is on to replace reality with a computer simulation of how it should be, which is able to respond to any virtual situation that can be thought up by a braindead population. The need for human contact and to communicate are now being reclassified as quite out-of-date - if you're plugged into a terminal and watching a screen then you'll have quite enough idea of what life really means. And maybe one day they'll say we no longer need food - they'll just give us virtual nourishment down a cathode ray tube. Now you can have virtual children, or virtual pets who, when they get ill, can go to virtual vets. Friday night clubbing with your virtual mates - trying out your chat-up lines on virtual dates. If you pluck up the courage you can have virtual sex. Does it make you wonder what they'll think of next? Maybe a virtual job and a virtual wife? Why not go the whole hog - load in a virtual life? And at the end of it all you'll be virtually dead (which you are already, I'd have honestly said). You should never underestimate the power of the companies to take your lives and natural drives and replace them with pale copies. If you think that life is just a little too real then a virtual world may have an appeal - a hypothetical life-game you can practise at home and pretend to yourself that you're not on your own. In a virtual world, choose any life that you want - you can print it all out and even choose your own font, but just don't think of opening your door and wanting the real life that you had before. When the game is over you'll just turn off the set - a feeling of emptiness is all that you'll get. Now you're back in the real world where you're just another maggot on a hook to be torn apart by corporate sharks who don't give a virtual fuck.
credits
license
all rights reserved
