Episode Three For You All To Enjoy!!

D A Y  T H R E E: Monday 2^nd March

            In these volatile times in which we all live, it seems as though everything

revolves around computers and information technology.  This whole virtual world

which we have created can be very useful to all of us in moderation and the

technology can be a brilliant organisational tool. 

            If you simply push here and ‘click’ there all shall be revealed in an instant. 

An optical and mental illusion, but a rather clever one.  The task is complete and your

information is stored or sent……somewhere……and for what purpose?

            The human brain is the most superior and complex microprocessor of all, but

through our own ignorance it is in mortal danger of being insidiously supplanted by

the very machines and processes that it designed and created.  Organisational illusion

could very easily become complete automated control if the human species allows it

to be.

            I enjoy playing video games as much as the next person, they are a good

release of tension and an escape into a fantastical world of dreams.  A couple of

nights ago, I found one of my Fighting Fantasy© gamebooks and gave it a whirl,

just for old times’ sake.  The experience was as awesome as it used to be in my

teenage years and once more my brain and imagination clicked into overdrive.  I

fondly remembered the days and sometimes weeks I would spend in quiet addiction to

these great adventure books where “you were the hero!”.  Now, all the heroes are

older and forgotten in what could become a technological nightmare, a much bigger

one than The Warlock on his Firetop Mountain could ever wreak upon us. 

            Simplify, organise and clarify.  I found that I had great fun with my gamebook

with nothing more than a pencil, rubber, paper, two six-sided dice and my

imagination, coupled with a great love of reading and good writing. 

            It is not a pre-requisite for life that all our daily affairs should be done and

presented to us by an impersonal and unemotional machine and is probably quite an

unhealthy state of human affairs.  A virtual life instead of a real one.  Computers and

machines undoubtedly have their brilliant uses, but it is essential to keep their

advances in balance with our much more powerful collective human consciousness so

that they may aid our existence and not control it.

            The computer is our tool that we created and as such we are still its master and

can turn it on and off at will so that we can continue to think independently and for

ourselves and one another. 

            I strolled in quiet contentment to the swimming pool tonight after work with

not an ‘image’ or a ‘click’ to be seen or heard.  I felt fantastically free as I  breathed

the air, reassured by the overriding and inescapable truth that I am a living and

breathing entity and not an android.