Hunger Games, Blood Sport, and Technology

My, my, I have been a poor correspondent.
Well, to *be* a correspondent, one must have someone with whom to correspond, eh?

Anyhow, I have been giving a lot of thought of late to the trilogy of books that begins with The Hunger Games, and how that post-apocalyptic world is really quite frightening. The Games are computer-designed and managed by people who crave blood sport, but who are too removed both emotionally and physically to be really affected by the outcome. This, to me, is the ultimate end of technology, if it remains unchecked and untempered by humane behavior. We see too often young people who are psychologically and physiologically affected by too much computer gaming, who are callous in their disregard for each other by texting, online "chat," and other forms of social media, and the result is a desensitized generation(s) of disconnected individuals who have little real interaction with other people, and who have learned disembodied violence from a very young age, and consider it "relaxing" and fun.

The Romans had the Colosseum, and today's world has...cyberspace. I don't think that the "odds will ever be in [our] favor."

The printed page and personal contact

Sorry I haven't been in touch, but I've been inhabiting the world of the printed page, poetry, poets, and people. I mean, people in the flesh. Human contact. Something, we who were at the conference all determined, don't tend to have enough of, at least not chosen, intentional contact, in this cyber-isolationism we've imposed upon ourselves. Yeah, the kids would hashtag that as "first world problems." And I tend to agree, although there are developing nations that have little clean water, but yet have Internet. Go figure.

One thing that struck me this week while I was attending and reading at a poetry gathering, was the oddity of  the few people who took the podium in Robert Frost's rustic barn in Franconia, NH, surrounded by trees, mosquitoes, and rapt faces...who opened up their laptops to read. It felt and looked really incongruous, and I was not the only one struck by the weirdness of it. It felt as if the page--as in, paper--should be celebrated, there in the historic setting. And there was the fact that the faces of the readers were oddly lit, the light source coming from under the chin, from the computer screen. The strangest thing, one that seemed not only out of place, but hard to work around as an audience member, was the barrier between reader/speaker and the listeners caused by the upraised screen. It just felt wrong. And this reminded me of the many, many times I have looked out at my own classroom, and found that eye contact was almost impossible to maintain, as all the eyes were down-turned, focused on the screen and whatever task or distraction was being displayed.

Something to ponder, I think. Human beings need human contact, and we must be very aware of the boundaries we erect while trying to make connections.