Still Living in Reality

PROVIDED BY BECKY NELSON
A recent report on some news source I frequently visit mentioned that business and the majority of our lives will soon be transacted in the metaverse. My single questions is…why?

My mother and father never learned to use a computer. My mother grew up in a very different world than I, even. When they were kids, dairies were still delivering milk and butter to the doorstep. Grocery stores were unheard of and small shops kept goods on back shelves and you had to ask the store-keep to pull them down for you. Horses were pulling carts through the streets to make deliveries. Horses were used here at the farm to complete all the tasks we now use tractors and gas-powered engines to complete and running water and electricity wasn’t installed until the 1940s. The television wasn’t even a concept and radios, board games, face to face conversation, singing around a piano or while someone played an instrument and books provided most entertainment unless you could afford to go to the movie theater. No one had travelled into space, not many had a car to drive, there were no telephones in the house, iceboxes, not refrigerators, kept food cold, indoor plumbing was rare in rural communities, and the transition from manual labor to the industrial scene was just taking shape.

Change is hard and change never happens without some painful transitions. Every once in a while my Mom would ask to have me show her how to communicate via the computer and the internet. We attempted the feat on several occasions and she was given a laptop by a friend. It gathered a lot of dust and never became a part of her daily routine. While she was still able to write, she would send a hand-written letter or card on occasion, and preferred to pick up a telephone or meet friends in person to checking email. My father had absolutely nothing to do with computers and had no desire to learn. The explosion of life “improvements” was tremendous during their lifetimes. Some of the improvements, like the availability to drive everywhere and make the tough work of the farm and lumber mills where my father worked a bit easier on the body were welcomed. The electronic world was nothing that interested or profited them.

Here in the digital world, I do rely on the internet for the bulk of my advertising and much of my communication needs, but the bulk of our work on the farm is still mechanical or by hand. Large farms are using GPS and computer programs for everything from planting to soil management to harvest, but we little guys are behind the times. We are now hostages to the digital age, however. Our main farm truck has been in the shop for two months now, waiting for an electronic part that makes it shift. It is unusable without the part that is still on a national backorder with no information available about when the part may be made. This expensive and essential part of our business sits idle…dead. We were forced to buy a replacement while we wait for the truck to be fixed. I would like to communicate with all manufacturers that the reliance on the digital is more a curse than a blessing. Maybe pulling back a little bit and relying less on chips and more on mechanics might make more sense. But who am I to question…

Being just a little cog in the giant wheel of life doesn’t leave me much leverage. My main question is…are we better off with all the “advancements”? Are our lives so much better with the changes we have made that we must strive for even less involvement in our lives by living in a metaverse that has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with electronics thinking for us, making music for us, entertaining us, working for us, controlling us, even making food for us?

Working in the school system a while back, my un-scientific observation was that the techno-world was stealing our youth away from us and our very humanity from us. AS artificial intelligence appears on the scene, why are humans even important any more? What is our purpose? Heck, I never used a computer until after college and my husband relies on me to check emails and keep watch on technological news, but kids are “on” their electronic devices most of the day. Is this healthy? Is this “right”? Is this better than our lives before? Are philosophers, artists, farmers, musicians…any of us…necessary in our digital lives moving “forward”? And where is this “forward that we are travelling toward at “warp speed”? As my Dad asked of the “Space Race”…why?

I look around me and see what is real. The amazing changing colors of the seasons and the workings of nature. The beauty, existence and tangibility of the natural world that doesn’t care about our digital unrealities. My growing, questioning and amazing grandchildren. My friends and my family members. I plan to focus on reality as I pass into my elderliness and remember what is important to me…the reality of my world. Like my mom, I don’t plan to dabble in the metaverse. Perhaps like the Luddites before me in the initiation of the mechanical age, I and others like me are destined to be nothing but a mention in the history books. Oh, yeah. There will be no need for books in the metaverse.