The other day I watched the fairly new movie, "Surrogates," in which everyone in the world experiences life through these machine-bodied surrogates, while the 'operators' remain in the safety of their homes.
I watched it because 1) I like science fiction and 2) Bruce Willis stars. I liked the movie. It had enough twists to keep you guessing, and the action was fairly strong throughout.
The most impacting line of the whole film, for me anyway, was spoken by the antagonist after he reveals his sinister plan to destroy the machines. He says, "Human beings weren't meant to experience life through machines!"
How very true! When computers were created, they were to save us time (and paper), but nothing seems to consume our time each day quite so much as our many electronic devices. When I think about how many hours I spend on a computer when I have some spare time or a day off, I think I'd be embarrassed to reveal the number. I'm grateful for much of what I can accomplish from my home computer, like communication with people far away, online banking, purchasing books and other items, and even searching for journal articles and things like that. But everything in moderation. The ease with which anyone can administrate their life on a computer, on the internet, is helpful. But if a person's use of these things isn't managed or moderated, it can easily become a colossal waste of time.
No wonder people back a century had such greater knowledge of things like philosophy, Latin, and Greek. They had no 'time saving devices' to eat up their every day.
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