Alien Nation

On Wake Island en route to “Ellis Island”, we were given an A-number ( A for Alien) to start an authenticating process which involves a life-time worth of chain documents.

America, land of the free – often times, a mix bag of not-too-free (credit card shackles) and undocumented “alien”. Somehow, it rises from Wilderness Ash to World Power: lonely at the top, ” Lonely Crowd” at the bottom , while in the middle , a material-centric, then data-centric life.

With 9 hours online (for teens), there is not much time left. No real-life crowd (P T Barnum anyone), no outdoor break-time (vapor break while thumbing the screen), nor water-cooler gossip. A nursing home visit to the elderly of the “village” is chore in compare to field trip (how about a trip back in time, or forward in time). Old folks once often consulted e.g. to keep or not to keep the proverbial Coke bottle now are living in isolation if not abandoned.

With billions online (Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law) our Crocodile Dundee will be “friending” in his digital backwaters via recommendation software: “G’ day mate!” as opposed to climbing a NYC’s light pole exhausted from social fatigue.

Once password-authenticated, we are cleared to sit back and relax; let the “I-core” chips take over. Voila!

No wonder criminals have migrated online! high-tech and high-yield (FTX and Theranos). ” Oh, I did click ‘Agreed’ but did not read the whole disclaimer”…

Back to when things were, no pun here, alien to us – new arrivals – even a STOP sign observed on an empty street, or a line formed at a cash register was something of a marvel ( lots of movies in the 80’s make fun of Russian new arrivals – with bread lines behind them – awestruck in an American supermarket where there were tons of cereal choices).

Slowly then suddenly, we evolve – albeit snail’s pace – while the machine ( hare’s pace): even Chinese restaurants are now with toothpick machine, next to payment machines. High tech high cholesterol with AI-generated customized fortune (cookies).

Our Agricultural practice reaches near full-automation. With 9 hours spare time for kids (no need for child labor) we can “amuse ourselves to death” (to use Mr. Postman’s title). NYC, Hollywood, Route 128 and Silicon Valley corridors will be glad to fill that content vacuum.

On the silver screen, our protagonist often smokes, punches and makes love, with a view of the bridge. We can’t blame them. Films with outdoor settings (Ishtar) or in the city (Istanbul) present a logistical nightmare, not to mention financial risks. We the audience by default are immerse in urban problems and pain ( then to escape the escape, we numb our pain with pills).

Collaboration and team work in an agrarian community is now lost. Industrial smokestacks with “Danger” signs also belong in “Rust belt” era (see Our Modern Times). As of late, it’s Nippon Steel? (once Pittsburg). Samsung and Tesla in Austin.

From Xerox to Zoom, Industrial to Information Age, work itself morphs from 9-5 to anytime gig, from office to outdoor – during and because of Covid. Face to face and “press the flesh” encounters are as rare as seeing Santa on Christmas.

Thieving and stealing has always been a lonely act. Now, together with us (victims) they and we together form a Lonely Crowd. One shouldn’t be surprised why younger folks prefer to text and multi-task (lack of empathy and engagement).

Japan experienced this shift first with their Generation without the Sun, before the trend finally made its way across the Pacific, accompanied by fellow traveler: AI doll (again, frustrated husbands can relate to this need of validation).

Meanwhile, our village elders are still toying with their 1.0 flip phones (proverbial coke bottle). No wonder we see people get sent away on cruises, where face-to-face bantering and venting are expected ( retirees’ vineyard).

See me. Feel me. Touch me. Hear me. Who are you? A nick behind it a string of zeros and ones? In real life, when dead, it takes at least 8 weeks for the grave marker to arrive. What a lag between offline and online world, as far as turn-around.

Survey indicated people would rather lose their wallets then their phones.

Fantasy (escaping time by losing ourselves in the moment) and reality itself have irreversibly traded places.

The self has also evolved, from Outer-directed to Inner-directed (courtesy of Mr. Reisman) then to a third-dimension (bits) as it learns to work with machine (no sudden drama and flare as frustrated husbands often experience).

We are lonely. Ever more so when the cursor stops blinking, device off. It’s then that we face the emptiness (while battery recharged) and we end up looking inward, into our many selves ( courtesy of Elizabeth O’Connor of the Church of the Savior, Washington D.C.). A SEAL urges us to “self-talk”, like an used-car salesman. “I like myself”….

That virtual society – A.I. doll as byproduct – always is learning and getting smarter (I am not advocating a Luddite U-turn). All this perpetuate our fear and reinforce a false notion that we have become inadequate and irrelevant ( for missing out on that “latest and greatest?” ). Alone together, we Occupy the Net.

Before long, we accept and adopt this UNREALITY as our new reality. We are just Being There – Peter Sellers without Shirley MacLaine.

Blame it on divorce court (James Dobson), Hollywood (Tipper Gore), drug (Nancy Reagan), booze (Betty Ford), climate (Jane Fonda). The “sinners” and the poor shall always be with you. The ominous others.

The Church with roots in agricultural past (parish and priest) is having a hard times coping with technology. In a hurry and by overcompensated reaction, religion piggy back on political hype, banking on candidates who symbiotically need to raise their campaign money hence, more versed in technology – online crowd, and real life flocks . Quite a marriage of convenience.

Fareed Zakaria agrees with me on this point (politics fills the void once occupied by religion).

People always offer themselves as “solutions” to the ill of society ( hence a de facto self-appointed platform and profiteer), without examining the underlying root “cause”. Perhaps it’s the times and system we found ourselves in (the new BOX). If only we could see all the wireless signals crisscrossing the continents, or the lit fiber strands underground, let’s say Ashburn, VA.

McLuhan was prescient in saying: ” the medium – Internet – is the message”. In other words, it’s the system stupid. With it, payload and self-adapting survival learning. Like anything else in the evolution process. Vincent Cerf , co-inventor of “distributed architecture” says “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. It sounds like we are living in a perpetual Beta as virtual “subjects – llab rats ” of the information age.

Name it “Mechanical Turk”, AI or whatever else.

Last Century, with clear eyes (after some hesitation and delay): the English, the Russian and the American, could at least agree on one blame: Hitler. If only it had been that simple and easy.

After Potsdam, arrived de-Colonization, Capitalism, Consumerism and Corporatism (CEO salary graph – a hockey-stick – says it all).

Now, it’s atomization and alienation (Alien Nation). The girl and guy with a Dragon tattoo, put on headsets, earplugs, glasses, masks, gloves, nose and ear rings… any wearables, to stay invisible as an essential class, only to be recognized during Covid. Like a line in the Quiet American, ” As a journalist, I don’t get involved. Reality is separated from me by my typewriter”.

Later deeper into the story, our anti-hero found himself inconspicuously entangled in a love triangle, he then says – with a blush face: ” How I wished there existed someone to whom I can say I am sorry”.

The movie ends with its anecdotal line: “When first arrived, everyone thinks he can understand the country (Vietnam) in just a few days, only to find out much later that one can barely scratch its surface” (I para-phased).

The same thing can be said about our current predicament. No single person is to take the credits ( Al Gore’s Information Superhighway) or the blame (Josh Hawley howling and belling out at Zuckerberg: “Have you offered an apology!”). Blame it on FTX, TikTok, Instagram, those “Senior lawyers” in the case of Jenna Ellis’ ill-vetted and irresponsible filings or Cambridge.Analytica

It just happened. Something happened. Even when we couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Lonely, vulnerable (Tesla lay-off) and insecure (not just the job’s) we feel, even when we sit inside our protected fence (real life) and firewalls ( inbox still filled with spam emails)

Awash in all types of communication, yet we found ourselves more paranoid and isolated with “nothing to watch” (the Happiness bell-shaped curve). Sitting in a food court? One might get shot or stabbed (Australia).

Our only wish (after saying a prayer) is for business to be as usual…not to have hackers break the codes (and hold us ransom) or chips malfunction even at 99.999 self-healing reliable packets transmission.

We all need American Express (our new digital A’s number). ” Don’t leave home without it.”

Or to leave that number on the cloud, with stored pre-paid arrangement for everyday access.

“Welcome to HAL ” says a digitally pre-recorded voice, with bio-metric entry.

” How I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry”. One has to live ( in immersion) long enough to understand it. Don’t blame just any one actor in particular.

It’s an Alien Nation, foreign to both native and naturalized, from Wake Island or Ellis Island.