[13] Children of Chaos >* [quotes from Douglas Rushkoff's : Children of Chaos >* [surviving the end of the world as we know it] , a.k.a "Playing the Future" 1996 : HarperCollins isbn 0-00-654879-2] "Be cool, don't panic, chaos is good. Just surf the Great Disorder and enjoy" >* quote : Dr Timothy Leary Ph.D, 1995
We are striving towards an INFORMATION and IDEAS-BASED culture :
Data and Creativity are becoming the new currency
Many still wonder how people are going to make a living in the so-called "Information Age" We will do so by selling what we generate from our minds, and on our own computers, as text, image, and code. When the commodity we have been selling - our physical labour - becomes obsolete [or at least in less demand] there had better be an alternative, a new commodity to sell.
Try creativity. Infinite supply, environmentally safe, culturally valuable, and even fun to make. Try creativity. Infinite supply, environmentally safe, culturally valuable, and even fun to make. If all our information were destined to be "free", then no one would be able to make any money with it, and we really would be in need of some gainful employment, FAST. The robots are already making our cars... The reason we don't need to worry is that the creation of wealth without the exploitation of physical The moment "we" realise that the computer medium is not just for reading and consuming, but for posting and participating, an entirely new set of responsibilities confronts us :
What do we want to say and do, and what effect will our words and actions have on global culture.
"The internet is simply a communications medium, it reflects society...the fundamental nature of being human is always reflected in the communications medium. But the internet has changed how people communicate, and how they conceive of themselves as a part of the world." [above quote : Marc Andresson 1995, Netscape ] The internet has the potential to bring us all together, allows us to explore new possibilities, leads us to challenge authority, and promotes the next phase of human evolution. Best of all, it allows us to express who we really are :
Wilful and potentially creative beings.
Instead of listening to authorities, we express ourselves in an uninhibited fashion, with no "moral arbiters". [screenage] Cyber-Information Age style politics encourage a more open approach toward governance. Instead of instituting policies in order to curb our natural behaviors - until now presumed to be selfish and evil - we are to erode such policies by creating an atmosphere of irreverent positivism. Empowered cybernauts assume a certain level of intelligence on the part of the general population, and seek to disseminate information, promote networking, and provoke action in as natural a way as possible.
It amounts to a restoration of aware, youthful optimism.
The chaos-acclimated screenagers, by forming collectives : immunise themselves from the panic and anxiety of adapting to a chaotic world, and show the rest of the population how media and What people are afraid of most is the emotion-numbing sterility and thought-deadening isolation of the modern experience. [screenagers] Chaos Kids overwhelmingly prefer personal computers to games consoles as a platform for entertainment. Further psychologists have noticed an improvement in intellectual abilities - problem solving, creativity, visual and spatial conceptualisation - among [college] students who play video games regularly. These chaos kids aren't afraid of the seemingly nebulous quality of cyberspace, or of re-evaluating how they "are part of the world". They have learned to get their bearings on the "web" by anchoring themselves in the associations called "links" :
Links, the connective fibres from one site to another, are the sustenance of cyberspace.
A home-pages' character and strength - its' ability to influence the rest of the "web" - is wholly determined by how many pages are linked to it. A chaos kid [screenager] creates his own identity, based as much in what he points to with the links on his home-page, as anything he may have to say by himself. Constructing ones page is "delivering oneself" as he chooses to be known, to the society at large.
However naively conceived or psychedelically enhanced, this is the self birth of the children of chaos.
[screenagers] Chaos kids are empowered cybernaughts, for whom work and play are indistinguishable aspects of life. They may be working at home, as the designer of a dazzling new cd-rom game based on their own analysis of Jungian dream archetypes. They may even be 14 years old. If they experience themselves as creative participants in their employment, rather than a helpless victim, then every tool at their disposal is another avenue for extending their mastery. Their nervous system - their very awareness - expands with every new "implement" they acquire. Empowered screenagers see Progress! as an augmentation of their own journey toward empowerment and expansion. They spend their energies doing what they enjoy, in order to get to do it some more. Their jobs get easier and more fun when they've got better tools.
They understand that enjoying work isn't a crime, and that turning creativity into a commodity, is like getting paid for playing.
They have necessarily dropped the duality implicit in the word employment. They are no longer passively being employed by an external force or person. The [screenage] chaos kids dominate the new media-space, a space that NO longer favors or respects the heavyweight. Marketers know that if they look like "suits" they will fail. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, we must learn to see ourselves as masters of our new communicative pathways [technologies].
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